It’s an institution—a phrase we have all come across or may have used. We intuitively understand what it means. There is something special, perhaps mythical, about them. We value these institutions. We may even find it hard to imagine a life without some of these institutions. In this chapter, we offer a definition of institutions and introduce our theoretical framework (based on the work of Philip Selznick). We introduce the case studies in this book and identify patterns of institution building.

When supervising emerging technologies, regulators are more effective when they collaborate with business. Yet, innovative businesses are often small, inexperienced, and mistrustful. How can regulators motivate them to collaborate? This study examines this question by applying responsive regulation theory to a case study of the United Kingdom's regulatory sandbox for financial technology. This study illustrates how frontline regulatory interactions foster regulator–innovator collaboration, in ways that differ from how these interactions foster collaboration between regulators and the mature industries upon whose study responsive regulation is based. As one of the first academic studies to collect data from sandbox participants, this article offers unique insights into “what works” about the United Kingdom's much‐imitated model.

IMPACTThe goal of this article is to identify evidence-based building blocks for smart and sensible practices of policy design, public leadership and management, while recognizing that universal templates for success are not the right approach. It is critical that strategies to improve governance show appropriate sensitivity to context. The authors offer an alternative for high-level assessments of institutional qualities of 'good government'. The article presents a practical toolkit to identify, assess, interpret, compare, and learn from concrete instances of public policy successes, highly successful public organizations, and collaborative, networked governance.

This article contributes to the discussion about managing the risks and uncertainties of emerging technologies through increased stakeholder participation. Authorities have increasingly invited stakeholders from high-technology sectors to participate in assessing the risks of, and designing responses to, new technologies. Yet authorities often struggle to attract stakeholders from such sectors to participate; a critical challenge identified but still undertheorised in the literature. Responding to this gap, this article presents a case study of the UK’s regulatory sandbox for financial technologies, applying a document study, questionnaire and interviews to explore fintech firm motivations and apprehensions about participation. Drawing on the bureaucratic reputation literature, the study finds that fintech firms have a range of practical, reputational and normative motivations to participate, and these motivations are inextricably tied to the regulator’s strong reputation with the sector as procedurally correct, high-performing and morally committed to facilitating innovation. On this basis, recommendations for practitioners and hypotheses for future research into the drivers of stakeholder participation in regulatory decision-making surrounding emerging technologies are proposed.

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