The position underlying this article is that while pilots are not strictly required to justify moving in the direction of a basic income system, nevertheless they can play several useful functions in the debate. These include rebutting common preconceptions, for instance that basic income will make people ‘lazy’, indicating non-monetary benefits such as improved health and wellbeing, and testing how a basic income might best be introduced in a given region, country or city. In that context the article goes on (...) to present 19 guiding principles for the design, implementation and evaluation of basic income pilots, with examples of selected experiments and pilots past and present. (shrink)