TrustTalk - It's all about Trust: Recent Episodes
Severin de Wit
Trust is the invisible force that shapes our world, and at TrustTalk, we're committed to exploring its many dimensions. Join us as we engage with thought leaders from all walks of life to discuss the role of trust in every aspect of our world. From personal relationships to business, technology, society, and beyond, we explore the wonders of this essential human emotion. It's a journey you won't want to miss.
Our guest, Tom Tyler, a psychologist, and professor at Yale Law School, highlights the paradox in the legal academy, where much of the law is dependent on beliefs about psychology, yet it is seldom based on actual psychological research. Tom mentions the significance of trust in the legal system and its central role in discussions within law schools and the field of law. They emphasize that trust is a crucial component of legitimacy and that the ability of the legal system to function effectively relies on the trust the public places in legal institutions.
He explains that historically, the legal system relied on a sanction-based model, threatening punishment to ensure compliance. However, behavioral science research has shown that building trust between the public and legal authorities is a more effective approach to gaining compliance and cooperation. Trust allows for a more cooperative relationship between the population and law enforcement, leading to an increased willingness to cooperate, provide information, and engage with the community, which aids in crime control.
The concept of procedural fairness plays a significant role in building trust in legal authorities. People want to be treated with dignity, respect, and have decisions and policies explained to them. Research suggests that procedural fairness is more important in determining trust in authorities than the actual outcomes of their decisions. Additionally, trust is not solely about neutrality and rule-based procedures, but also encompasses relational aspects, such as sincerity, benevolence, and taking into account the needs of the people being dealt with.
Tom argues that trust in legal authorities leads to not only compliance but also contributes to building the viability and strength of communities. A trust-based system promotes engagement, social connections, and active participation in community governance and activities. This, in turn, can reduce the need for constant surveillance and policing, making the community more self-regulating and self-sustaining.
He notes that implementing procedural justice in policing and courts has shown positive outcomes in various communities. Improving the internal climate of law enforcement, as well as how officers are treated by their superiors, can positively impact how they treat the public, ultimately leading to enhanced procedural fairness and trust in the community.
Furthermore, Tom argues that procedural justice is a widely accepted and agreed-upon concept across different ethnic, cultural, and economic groups. It is seen as a universal feature that fosters trust in legal authorities. While primarily studied in advanced industrialized societies, the principles of procedural justice have been found to hold true in various contexts.
Our guest today is Tom Van der Meer, a political science professor from the University of Amsterdam. He's an expert in political trust, social connections and voting patterns. Tom highlights the historical importance of political trust since post-World War II. He explains that the idea of a continuous decline in trust isn't entirely accurate. Trust levels vary across regions and times. He shares an interesting idea when people lose trust due to poor government performance, it might actually motivate them to get more involved in a democracy like voting and protesting. This can lead to positive change. Tom also explores what shapes political trust. He breaks down reasons like fair institutions, electoral systems, and education's impact. He discusses the link between corruption and trust, showing how corruption hurts trustworthiness and the importance of fairness in countering it. Tom talks about how politicians talk about trust and the connection between populism and political trust. He points out that the two aren't always directly linked, but trust affects how people vote and which parties they support. When asked about Francis Fukuyama's view on populist politicians and distrust in institutions, Tom partially agrees but adds nuance. He challenges the idea that populism always arises from declining trust, pointing out examples like modern populism emerging in high-trust countries. He also notes that the connection between rising populism and decreasing trust isn't always direct, as events and trust fluctuations don't consistently match Fukuyama's theory. Tom does share agreement with Fukuyama on the growing politicization of political trust. He observes that voters now choose parties based on trust levels a change from the past, where Trusters and Distrusters often voted for the same parties. Tom highlights the role of polarization and ideology in shaping party dynamics. He's concerned not just about overall trust levels, but also how trust is distributed across parties. He warns that parties dominated by distrusting individuals could lead to challenges like questioning election legitimacy, as seen in the United States.
Our next guest, Lee Rainee,director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & Technology Research Group, delves into the subject of trust in the context of the Internet and institutions. He identifies two key aspects of online trust. Firstly, a decline in trust, particularly concerning major technology companies and institutions. People have become increasingly skeptical about the privacy and reliability of these entities. This decline is further exacerbated by the interplay between privacy concerns, trust issues, and confidence in institutions within the online space.
However, despite the declining trust, he argues that people are unlikely to disengage from online activities. The internet has become deeply integrated into modern life, and essential tasks, such as banking and shopping, heavily rely on online tools. People have grown dependent on the convenience and efficiency offered by internet-based services, even if they express reservations about trusting the companies providing them.
The conversation also explores several contributing factors to declining trust. Historical events, such as the Vietnam War, Watergate scandals, and economic recessions, have eroded trust in institutions over time. The internet has amplified these trends by providing access to information about institutional shortcomings, fuelling suspicions and concerns about trust.
Political polarization is another influential factor. The rise of right-wing nationalist organizations, combined with politics becoming a divisive battleground, has led to heightened mistrust among citizens. Additionally, frustrations arise from the perception that governments are inept in addressing major societal challenges, such as climate change, misinformation, and the pandemic.
Notably, trust is portrayed as a transactional calculation. Individuals weigh the potential benefits of an interaction against the compromises it might entail. Trust, in this context, becomes context-specific and contingent on various factors, reflecting a complex interplay of motivations and perceptions.
Lee discusses the research methodology employed to study trust. Given the declining response rates to phone polls, online surveys have become more prevalent. Ensuring representative samples is crucial to obtain accurate insights into trust levels. However, some individuals distrust survey-givers, which may lead to incomplete data representation.
He discusses the echo chamber argument, where people seek information that aligns with their views, but his data shows that highly motivated partisans from both the activist left and right actively engage with diverse information, including opposing views, to strengthen their arguments and understanding of the political landscape. Partisanship, civic engagement, and commitment to the political system play a significant role in determining the information people seek.
The interview touches upon the role of academia and research in understanding trust. Different researchers focus on various aspects of trust, ranging from political culture and democratic institutions to corporations and macroeconomics. Understanding the complexities of trust in its various forms and contexts remains an ongoing area of exploration.
Our guest, Peter Dinesen, Professor of political science at UCL London and the University of Copenhagen talks about the consequences of immigration on generalized social trust. In his research, he explores if immigrants bring low levels of trust from their home countries or adapt to the trust levels in their new countries. And if natives respond to the increased presence of immigrants with lower levels of trust. Immigrants tend to catch up to the trust levels of natives in their new countries, while there is evidence of a weak negative effect of the presence of immigrants on trust levels among the native-born. However, Peter cautions against exaggerating the negative consequences, as other factors such as low corruption play a more significant role in trust. This is illustrated by trust increasing to record levels in Denmark since 1980 despite increasing immigration to the country.
Kevin Werbach, professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and formerly Counsel for New Technology Policy at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, is an well-known expert on the business, legal, and social implications of emerging technologies. In this interview we explore blockchain technology and its impact on traditional notions of trust. He delves into the different architectures of trust, including peer-to-peer trust, Leviathan trust, and intermediary trust, highlighting the limitations and risks associated with these traditional forms of trust, leading to the introduction of decentralized architecture offered by blockchain technology.
The interview focuses on the application of blockchain in enhancing trust in specific contexts, using the example of Walmart implementing a blockchain-based solution to improve food safety within its global supply chain. The guest speaker emphasizes how blockchain can overcome trust barriers and inefficiencies, leading to enhanced trust and improved outcomes.
The conversation also delves into the potential of blockchain technology to bring about freedom from corporate and government power, while acknowledging the risk of empowering criminals. Kevin highlights the importance of blockchain as a part of rebuilding trust in society, by providing transparent and decentralized systems for verifying information and maintaining integrity. He sets out the value of cryptocurrencies, bitcoin, with an emphasis on how blockchain technology provides trust through the integrity and transparency of the ledger. The interview concludes with a discussion on the viability of blockchain technology, the collapse of centralized platforms like FTX, and the comparison between the telecom industry and blockchain.
In this episode, Professor Eric Uslaner, in his latest book, “National Identity and Partisan Polarization” delves into the complex topic of trust and its implications for societies and politics. He highlights some key insights and concerns regarding trust, corruption, nationalism, and their interconnections. Throughout the interview, we explore the moral basis of trust, it lies in the belief that people of different backgrounds can trust each other based on shared interests, regardless of ethnic, religious, or ideological differences. This belief instils the notion of equality and is typically learned from parents at an early stage of life. Trusting individuals are more likely to engage in charitable giving, volunteerism, and compromise in both personal and political spheres. However, the current climate of political polarization runs counter to the concept of generalized trust. The level of trust in a society is strongly influenced by the degree of economic equality.
Corruption tends to thrive in societies with low levels of trust and high levels of inequality. In highly corrupt environments, resources for public goods such as education and healthcare are diminished. Moreover, individuals in such societies often prioritize their own well-being and may support corrupt leaders from their own group. Punishing corrupt individuals alone is insufficient, as new corrupt actors will likely take their place. The guest emphasizes that reducing corruption requires widespread public education.
The rise of nationalism globally signifies a decline or stagnation in trust. Nationalism reflects particularized trust, where individuals trust only those who are similar to them. It often entails perceiving those different from oneself as threats to the desired social order. Countering the rise of nationalism is challenging and requires long-term efforts, including education and generational change. Political trust presents a similar challenge, as opposing sides tend to view each other as enemies.
Our guest expresses concerns about the growing nationalism trend worldwide. Notably, Sweden, a country known for its tolerance, experienced the rise of nationalist parties advocating for stricter immigration policies and emphasizing divisions between natives and foreigners. The United States has also seen immigration become a major political concern. Troublingly, in some cases, immigration opposition gained more support for certain political parties than they lost on other issues such as abortion. The rise of nationalism presents complex challenges without immediate solutions.
Throughout this thought-provoking conversation, we explore the multifaceted nature of trust, its relationship with corruption and nationalism, and the difficulties associated with addressing these issues. The guest's insights shed light on the dynamics shaping trust in societies today.
As the ultimate expert on the role of trust between organizations, Professor Reinhard Bachmann talks about the importance of risk and vulnerability: you do not need to trust if you are not vulnerable, nor if you want to avoid any kind of risk. What role play competence and integrity?
He speaks about his research into the role of trust and power in two types of inter-organizational relationships, vertical relations (supply chain) and horizontal relations (M&A, joint venture, cooperations), the “system” or “institutional” trust in liberal capitalist countries (like in the UK) versus coordinated capitalist countries (like in Continental Europe).
In the case of acquisition transactions, two organizations need to be integrated, it is not uncommon that one side distrusts the other (job loss, uncertainty) and why is it that many M&A transactions or joint ventures fail, due to lack of trust? In organizational trust you need to see real persons who represent an organization: if it is an abstract organization and you would not associate any human face with it, it is very difficult to trust.
Too much trust is dangerous too: the global financial crisis of 2008 was for a part caused by too much trust in financial advisers (“blind trust”).
He reflects upon organizations that say they do not need trust because they can control and monitor operations more closely by technical means (surveillance, video, etc), wondering whether trust becomes obsolete (he thinks it is not).
Our guest today is Francis Fukuyama. He is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a faculty member of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, and a professor of Political Science. His interest in philosophy and inspiration for his later work came from his undergraduate teacher, Allan Bloom. He talks about interpersonal trust that enables formal institutions to establish property rights and the rule of law and a commercial code to promote economic activity, about the lack of trust that will add to transaction costs and make business dealings much more difficult.
When asked about the eroding political trust he talks about the rise of populist politicians and the distrust they foster against institutions as well as media to gain power, the elite losing sight of the views of ordinary people, being unresponsive and unaccountable, which has led to a crisis of trust in political institutions. We talk about information distortion, conspiracy theories, and the imperviousness of fact-checking and evidence.
He counters China and Russia’s arguments that liberal democracy is an obsolete system, and talks about Putin’s Ukraine war and the effects that any outcome will have on other conflicts in the world, the Biden election win denial in the US, people’s disenchantment with European institutions for not delivering.
In his book, Trifecta of Trust, psychometrics and leadership expert Joseph R. Folkman has collected compelling data to make the case for the value of trust in leadership. His research shows that there are three core behaviors that create and reinforce trust from others. By mastering this leadership trust trifecta, you can increase success and happiness, both in business and in life.
Voice Over: oday's guests are Deloitte's Michael Bondar and Natasha Buckley. Michael is a principal in Deloitte's Advisory Business and the US and global leader of Deloitte's Enterprise Trust Practice. Natasha is senior manager at the Deloitte Centre for Integrated Research. Trust drives enterprise performance and mitigates risk. Trust elevates customer and brand loyalty, which can increase revenue. It enhances levels of workforce engagement, which can result in increased productivity and workforce retention. They talk about the old adage that you can only manage what you can measure and how Deloitte measures trust to help clients make strategic decisions. Natasha and Michael also talk about how specific operating areas like superior customer service delivering innovative solutions or protecting customer data significantly elevate trust in a brand leading to higher performance. We talk about digital engagement and digital transformation and why they are key drivers of trust. About A.I. and how it can help to validate information accuracy. How trust across different stakeholder groups can be maintained and the trust challenges that lay ahead.
Today's guest is Sander Smits, senior partner at McKinsey Amsterdam. He talks about the book “CEO Excellence”. The consultancy firm interviewed over 2.400 CEOs out of their database, from which they selected 67 “Excellent CEOs” for the book. He talks about the role of Roosevelt’s “fireside chats” during the financial crisis of the 1930s to create trust and the parallel with CEOs finding ways to establish trust with the company’s board and its stakeholders, the need for transparency with the board, and the different dynamics that play a role in steering the company, like setting a bold vision on where the company should be headed to and by doing so build trust. 68% of CEOs that were interviewed said they were completely unprepared for their new role, and one-third of Fortune 500 CEOs don’t make it through the first 3 years of their tenure. He talks about the book’s research into six mindsets - McKinsey calls it the “Irreducible Core” – that CEOs have to rise to the top of the list, one of them to listen to numerous inputs and from that formulate a bold vision.
Engaging with stakeholders builds trust. He mentions the example of the Nestlė CEO who reached out to environmentalists to talk about renewable raw materials and how to use that, trying to fully understand their point of view. He likes a quote from one of the interviewed CEOs: do you want to have a team of stars or do you want to have a star team?
Our guest today is Tonia Ries, Executive Director of Thought Leadership for the Edelman Trust Institute. For more than 20 years Edelman has been publishing the Edelman Trust Barometer on the status of trust in four institutions: business, government, NGOs, and media. She talks about GenZ and their predilection for employment values and societal roles of their employers, spreading their influence on Western culture and views on the role of trust. Recent trust research shows an epidemic of misinformation and widespread mistrust of societal institutions and leaders around the world, a failing trust ecosystem unable to confront the infodemic, leaving the four institutions—in an environment of information bankruptcy and a mandate to rebuild trust and chart a new path forward. Recent research shows that governments are not seen as competent, nor ethical. Rather businesses are more trusted increasingly being asked to take on responsibilities that historically have been responsibilities for governments. She talks about exciting new opportunities when it comes to trust research. The interview concludes with Tonia’s vision of the main challenges for trust research. She talks about stakeholder capitalism and the debate as to who should the primary stakeholder of business be.
Our guest today is Reinhard Stelter, Professor of Sport- and Coaching Psychology at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He advocates a new form of coaching as a transformational dialogue, one that fosters trust between the coach and the dialogue partner by a more relational “attunement” or resonating with the coaching partner. He refers to the need for what the German sociologist Hartmut Rosa called “Resonance”, to show that in times of ever-growing acceleration in technology, private interactions, and social processes, resonance might be the solution. He advocates that in the process of resonating with another person, we can develop trust and growth in relationships and understanding.
He talks about his move from performance-oriented sports psychology towards developing coaching as a transformational dialogue where trust is the foundational premise. The focus is on developmental issues, where clients or dialogue partners struggle with themselves or specific challenges they are faced with. The perspective of “dialogue coaching” can be described as fellow-human companionship: dialogue guides – a professional coach or colleague or a friend – support their dialogue partner by including themselves in the dialogue as a collaborative and co-reflecting partner.
As a researcher in AI and robotics, Professor Benjamin Kuipers, in this interview, sees increasing applications of AI in our society, it is natural to wonder whether the behavior of these artificially intelligent systems should somehow be governed by ethics. There is general agreement that ethics imposes constraints on individual behavior for the benefit of society as a whole. There is also a general recognition that trust is important, for individuals, organizations, and society as a whole. But aside from recognizing that trust is in general a good thing, few people have looked carefully at the specifics of how trust serves the thriving, and perhaps even the survival, of our society. In this interview, Benjamin Kuipers, based on ideas from many insightful thinkers, suggests a framework for how these elements work together: a society thrives when it has the resources to respond to threats and opportunities when it gains resources through positive-sum interactions where many positive-sum interactions are forms of cooperation, which in turn involves vulnerability to exploitation by partners. Trust is a willingness to accept vulnerability, confident that it won’t be exploited, and for trust to be effective, one’s self and others must be trustworthy. Through ethics, a society teaches its members how to be trustworthy and how to recognize trustworthiness in others.
Our guest today is Jason Rhys Parry, Senior Content R&D at Sapienship, the global social impact company founded by Yuval Noah Harari and Itzik Yahav and headed by Naama Avital. Sapienship's mission is to focus global attention on the most important collective challenges facing the world today, through entertainment, education, and investments.
In this interview, he talks about an old mechanism for academics to build trust, the footnote, and the damaging effect hiding scientific work behind paywalls has on public access to information. Global cooperation did produce unintended positive effects on global warming as he explains the Montreal Protocol did by storing billions of tonnes of carbon stored in plants that would otherwise be in the atmosphere. He talks about the “replication crisis” in science, flawed studies, experiments that fail to replicate, the effect of too much media attention, and a lack of self-criticism and self-evaluation. And about the cost of averting climate breakdown: the “2%-More-Rule”: if humanity invests just an extra 2% of Global GDP in developing eco-friendly technologies and infrastructure every year, this would be enough to prevent catastrophic climate change.
Our guest today is Margaret Levi, professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences at Stanford University. She talks about her upbringing in a middle-class Jewish suburb, how the protest marches she was going to with her mother, and the books she got from her father made her believe that you have to stand up to something that’s wrong. Her publications concentrate on trust in government, the ways in which citizens and governments interact, about institutions providing a setting in which we feel protected. She talks about the social contract between citizens and their institutional leaders and the role of accountability. The Covid pandemic has produced new insights into citizens’ behaviors. In her book “In the Interest of Others” she explains why members of organizations are willing to engage in costly actions, using the Australian transportation unions as an example. To create trust, credible and fact-based communication is essential. Asked what the challenges are for future generations of political scientists, she mentions the threat democracy is under.
In today’s interview with Peter Sieradzki, former CEO of the private bank InsingerGilissen, he talks about trust built on institutional processes, the breaches of trust in corporations and banks, the role of integrity and sustainability in the banking business, and about fintech providing a great impetus in the development of new technology and new systems in banks. He reflects on cryptocurrencies and whether they can gather sufficient integrity to be seen as a trusted financial instrument and on trust challenges for banks in the foreseeable future.
Andrew Winston, the co-author of the book “Net Positive”, talks about the challenges that lay ahead and the limited time we have to contribute to the world’s problems. A net positive company improves the well-being of everyone they impact and the lives of everyone it touches, from customers and suppliers to employees and communities, greatly increasing long-term shareholder returns in the process, taking ownership of all the social and environmental impacts its business model creates. This in turn provides opportunities for innovation, savings, and builds a more humane, connected, and purpose-driven culture. He talks about the important connection of building trust with the external world so you can get to the kinds of partnerships and collaborations that we need to solve really big problems, without that trust built up, it's going to be nearly impossible, as one cannot have a very functional partnership unless there's some level of trust. This is no utopian fantasy. Courageous leaders are already making it real and the stakes couldn't be higher. With bold vision and compelling stories, hesets out the principles and practices that will deliver the scale of change and transformation the world so desperately needs.
Today’s guest is Wes Bricker, US Vice-Chair and US Trust Solutions Co-Leader of PwC. He served as Chief Accountant at the US Security Exchange Commission. In this interview he talks about PwC’s project “The New Equation” and the two most fundamental needs clients and organizations are grappling with today: Firstly the urgency to successfully respond to, and change, in the face of major shifts shaping the world: technological disruption, climate change, fractured geopolitics, social tension, and the continuing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Secondly, the need to build trust at a time when it is both more fragile and more complicated to earn.
The Covid pandemic has learned us that we have to rely on science, at the same time when scientists appear in public they are often criticized and mistrusted. In this interview, Roberto Gronda (University of Pisa, Italy) explains why this is: operating as a scientist in the context of a university or laboratory renders more trust than a scientist doing consultancy where the scientist has to show more qualifications, like being media savvy. A lot of scientists work in big groups, so they need to trust each other because they do not have all the skills necessary to assess every bit of knowledge. The old idea is that there is a scientist who has enough skills to build everything from scratch, to know everything about his field of research to be completely autonomous from all the other people. That's not possible anymore. So lay people need to trust a scientist. But the relationship between laypeople and scientists is a relationship of inequality. As for what knowledge is concerned, there is no chance that laypeople can know things better than scientists in their field of research.
In this interview with Moira Dean, Professor in consumer psychology and food security at Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland (UK) we talk about her research into consumer food choices, food safety, food fraud, risk perceptions, and food supply chain management and food labeling. Consumers developed different food habits during the pandemic and lockdowns. We talk about the “head, heart, and hands” or the perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of consumers and producers along the food supply chain to explore food security challenges and create trust in food. She explores the challenges in global food integrity and how the world’s growing population will get food in a sustainable, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly way. In the interview, we cover the 2020 Deloitte survey into consumer attitudes on ethical and environmentally produced food. How can labeling products enlarge the trust of consumers? What is the role of all players in the food production chain, the farmers, food producers, and retail?
This interview with Richard Ned Lebow, Professor of International Political Theory at the Department of War Studies at King’s College in London, was taken, just before Russia invaded Ukraine. We talked about trust in international relations, about the view that asking Ukraine to renounce membership of NATO is dangerous (which he does not agree with), a discussion that rendered moot with the news about Russia invading Ukraine.
Trust is an important element in diplomacy mentioning three famous examples in history. Trust in diplomacy should be distinguished from trust in nations.
He talks about the role of disinformation during World War II. Russia was not the only country using disinformation (“maskirovka”) in warfare. General Patton of the Allied Forces staged a non-existent army in Kent, including radio traffic as if it was a real army to strengthen the German belief that an allied invasion would start in the French Port of Calais.
He comments on Stanford professor Larry Diamond’s view that we see a trend of a “democratic depression”, about deterrence and realist models of International relations assuming that trust is in short supply.
When companies or politicians break trust, it takes three equally important steps to repair trust. As a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School and co-writer of the book “The Power of Trust: How Companies Build It, Lose It, Regain It”, Sandra Sucher takes us through some examples of apologies after broken trust that were ineffective, causing tremendous harm. UBER is a very competent company, yet they are losing customers due to a lack of trust, Volkswagen had its trust failure after rigging emissions test of their diesel cars, for which the CEO apologized, but did so unconvincingly, with great consequences.
But there are examples of successful trust repair. Who remembers Japanese-based platform business Recruit Holdings, who after a scandal showed how to repair broken trust, or the PWC gaffe from 2017, where employees mixed up the winner's envelope, as a result of which La La Land was announced the Oscar winner, instead of Moonlight. Both did a remarkable job in restoring trust. In the interview, she explains what it took to restore those trust failures.
She talks about a study by Kurt Dirks who found that the NCAA basketball team won the most games due to the trust they had in their coach and about the way politicians can restore broken trust, about creating a trusted work environment for women, and the four attributes of trust repair.
Today’s guest is entrepreneur Leen Zevenbergen. Together with Marcello Palazzi, he started the non-profit organization “B Lab”, with the idea that a different kind of economy was not only possible but necessary and that business could lead the way towards a new, stakeholder-driven model. B Lab has become known for certifying B Corporations (or “Benefit Corporations”). A “B Corp” is a company that meets high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, sustainability, and transparency. Currently, there are over 4,000 B Corps in 75 countries. He talks about the Impact Measurement Tool of B Lab which 160,000 companies in the world are using. The country with the most B-Corps is Italy.
In this interview with Carl Hart, professor of neuroscience at Columbia University, New York, he sets out his belief that the way we think about drugs and addiction is wrong and prevents society to live up to its ideals of liberty and the pursuit of happiness. All drugs, he argues, should be fully legalized, and instead of punishing or shaming people for drug use, we should focus on helping them use drugs wisely. Do we trust the people that regulate drugs to do the right thing to keep people safe? In his view, the answer to this question is a resounding no. We don't trust those people.
Jacoba Sieders is among the top experts on digital identity in Europe. In this second interview with her (the first one was published on April 18, episode 17) she talks about the three phases of how digital identity developed over time, about “federated identity”, one password to log in to different organizations. In a third stage, you upload your data and by doing so establish your own digital identity in your own digital wallet. The newest innovation, is “distributed identity”, that you as a user are the center of your own digital identity and not the organizations that need to trust you. It is called self-sovereign identity (SSI) with zero-knowledge proof, the idea that your claim (e.g. that you are over 18 and can buy alcohol or are entitled to drive) is right, without sharing all your personal data. She explains the necessary “triangle” of the digital wallet, the holder, issuer, and validator of personal data and talks about the ten requirements of proper identity management, among which is privacy and the “right to be forgotten”. She explains the attempt by the EU to create a single digital market by eIDAS, or electronic IDentification, Authentication, and trust Services), an EU regulation on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the European Single Market. Can we get rid of cookies, or passwords, altogether? Finally, she speaks about medical and other very private data in 2G apps fighting the coronavirus.
Roy Lewicki, the Irving Abramowitz Memorial Professor Emeritus at the Ohio State University, Columbus, OH. He is a leading scholar in the study of trust development and trust repair, negotiation, and conflict management processes. Trust repair is a critical part of negotiations, but also in marital therapy, community mediation, or business relationships. Apologies are important for repairing trust. He talks about the six components that make an apology work to restore trust. Trust works both on a cognitive level, a brain level rationally determining whether the other is trustworthy as well as a strong emotional component. Groups that study larger trust dynamics like politics, or economics, or the law, often pay not enough attention to those emotional components.
In economics transactional trust is important, it is the glue that holds our economic, political, and community systems together.
Broken trust in social media is not less of a research subject. Lying, cheating and dishonesty are as much a part of organizational dynamics as they are among the fleeting relationships in social media. So the phenomena are more similar than they are different.
Trust in negotiation is about telling the truth, but not giving away your bargaining position, not using tactics that are intended to emotionally manipulate the other party like lies or dirty tricks or sneaky tactics. And about following through and honoring your promises and commitments both on their part and on your part.
Can we trust the world to be able to feed 10 billion mouths in 2050? In this interview with Robert van Gorcom, director of Wageningen Food Safety Research he talks about the means to feed the world in 30 years in a sustainable way, respecting our planet. Science has to deliver the innovations necessary for the food production. There are 3 factors that create trust in food: sustainability, safety, and supply. Consumers expect nothing less than 100% safe foods but food production also involves risks. The food system we design has to be in balance with our planet. The food supply chain has been made too complex. Consumers do not realize enough that the price they pay in the supermarket is not the “real” price, because we don’t pay for the depletion of resources, we do not pay for animal welfare. He talks about the role of supermarkets, in stimulating trust by adding transparency to the food production system.
Paul Zak is a professor at Claremont Graduate University in Southern California and the Founder of Immersion Neuroscience. He talks about the neuroscience of trust. His experiments researching the neurochemical oxytocin (the "Trust Molecule") show that most humans are biologically wired to cooperate, but that business and economics ignore the biological foundations of human reciprocity, risking loss. Building a culture of trust is what makes a meaningful difference. Employees in high-trust organizations are more productive, have more energy at work, collaborate better with their colleagues, and stay with their employers longer than people working at low-trust companies. They also suffer less chronic stress and are happier with their lives, and these factors fuel stronger performance.
Maikel Batelaan, consultant and co-author of the book “Why Should I Trust You” talks about the ideal of every organization: smooth collaboration. In practice, it is more unruly. After all, there are always complex problems that need to be solved. Many leaders then react impulsively: they flee or they fight. Increasingly, we see leaders who choose the solution that lies exactly in between: they create trust. Organizations are much more equitable, much flatter than they used to be. If there is a need to create change or to overcome existing rivalries, the first thing that comes to mind is to restore trust among the key players, trust between leaders and co-workers. And that's why he thinks that in most cases where organizations want to change, trust is something that should be seriously looked at. Distrust blocks basic team performance, and it also makes people very unhappy in their private life. If a situation like that exists, it's important in the first place to identify the elephant in the room. He talks about the taboo to talk about this lack of trust and the remedies to restore trust.
Admiral Rob Bauer is NATO’s most senior military officer. In his first podcast interview he talks about the crucial role of trust in the military training and operations, about his years at the Naval Academy and the international retreat from Afghanistan, about “mission command” and his personal mantra “Expect the Unexpected”. He speaks of military personnel as highly educated and trained professionals, who do not conform to popular stereotyping, about ethical choices in combat and the difference between trust and performance.
Paul Timmers talks about trust and cybersecurity. Cyber threats undermine trust in the daily practice of working with digital systems and in geopolitical relations. But even if we should increase our control of digital technologies, some myths about digital sovereignty must be debunked. Nevertheless, there are also sensible ways forward to strengthen strategic autonomy in the digital world. Importantly, the debate about trust and technology is going really to the foundations of the kind of society that we want to have.
Afghanistan has been all over the news in the past weeks. The reason was far from positive. The Taliban unexpectedly returned to power, just at the time that the last international troops were being withdrawn from the country. The final chapter of twenty years of international engagement became the most tragic one, as countries tried to evacuate their citizens and the Afghans that had worked for them. In TrustTalk we talk to Jorrit Kamminga, an associate fellow of the Dutch Clingendael Institute who spent 16 years in Afghanistan and has recently published a Dutch book about twenty years of the Netherlands in Afghanistan. With him, we explore the various layers of trust that existed in the past twenty years. From the national parliaments of donor countries and the international military coalitions to the Afghans on the receiving end and the new interim government of the Taliban.
In this interview with trust researcher Bart de Jong he focuses on the impact of trust on teams in organizational settings, about the difference in hierarchy or rank among team members. Trust building in a team should not be a one-off exercise but an inherent element of every interaction, every day. He talks about three ways managers can have control over that they can use to build and maintain trust, about differences in online and face-to-face team meetings. He researched three waves of trust research, spanning a period of more than 25 years.
Deep trust and high expectations are set to be two pillars of high-performing cultures and Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is essential to both. It is said that when leaders set high expectations without the EQ necessary to create trust, they breed anxiety. They breed stress and burnout. Bert Iedema, board room coach has extensive experience with EQ and how to improve it by training, helping to create trust.
According to Marcos Aguiar, senior partner and managing director at BCG Sao Paulo, Brazil, 7 out of the 10 most valuable companies in the world, are ecosystems. When there is no trust or if the level of trust falls in an ecosystem, participants are less likely to cooperate and frictions occur, harming their performance. Competence is by far the most prevalent trust driver in the ecosystems he studied, among others companies like Sony, Amazon, Handy, HopSkipDrive, Spotify, BaseCamp, Blix, Tile, Match, Ant Group’s Trusple, Doordash, TaskRabbit and Apple. There are tools you can use to reinforce trust, or to substitute for trust, which is what the BCG Henderson Institute identified in the successful ecosystems they studied, the “7 tools for building a business people trust”.
Trust becomes an issue in copyright in the digital age because it is based on an implicit understanding of the way content is copied and distributed versus how copyright could be infringed. In the pre-digital age, it is based on a foundation of trust between businesses and the amount of trust that was implied in relationships between creators and consumers. In the digital age, every user has the ability to make virtually an infinite number of copies of creative works for almost no cost and distribute them to anyone they want in the world. And so the copyright owner no longer has this ability to obtain recourse against people who he doesn’t know and who to trust. In this interview Bill Rosenblatt discusses the various technical means to establish that trust in digitally distributed works, from digital rights management, watermarking, financial means like levies, and other means. He reminds us of the US CASE law and the problem with legislation to solve the trust issue in dispersing digital copyrighted material.
David Horsager is a global expert on trust and CEO of Trust Edge Leadership Institute where the mission is to develop trusted leaders and organizations. Trust is a fundamental, bottom-line issue. Without it, leaders lose teams, salespeople lose sales, and organizations lose reputation, retention, and revenue. But high-trust teams and organizations bring out the best in their people and get the greatest results. Through David’s industry-leading research The Trust Outlook and firsthand experience working with the world’s highest-performing organizations, David reveals the 8 Pillar Framework for driving business results and becoming the most trusted in your industry.
In this interview negotiation experts, Bob Bordone and Tim Masselink explain what it takes to build trust during negotiations. Negotiation includes any intent, any effort, any set of communications to influence or to persuade. So embedded under negotiation are things like dispute resolution or conflict resolution or mediation in my mind, because all of those tasks in some way are around trying to influence behavior. Negotiation is bigger than that. Negotiation includes both making deals and helping people resolve conflicts or helping people manage disputes in some way. What do skillful negotiators have to make them succeed? The importance to create value with the other side: the more negotiators feel that there is trust with their counterpart, the less risky it is for any of the parties to share information about their preferences, the less risky it is for them to engage in a joint venture with them. The role of online or real-life meetings for the outcome of negotiations, the importance of being honest and predictable. Have men and women different skills? Negotiation is not a debate. The "shadow of the future" hanging over negotiations. We talk about negotiations via virtual tools (ZOOM, TEAMS), can they be effective, and the role of confidentiality.
Interview with Jeroen Ouwehand. He is Global Senior Partner of the international law firm Clifford Chance. In this role, he not only represents 580 partners but also chairs the Partnership Council but he is above all the ambassador for the firm externally. The work of lawyers is all about trust, reputation, and quality. Once competing for instructions, during the pandemic there has been a flight to trusted relationships and quality and clients revert back to those relations that are strongest, which have the most trust. Trust is about being honest, about integrity, about doing the right thing when no one is watching, and about keeping promises, managing expectations, and being honest about what you can do and can't do. Within the corporate culture Clifford Chancetrust-building is essential, the firm trains legal and non-legal skills, negotiation skills, presentation skills commercial awareness skills, but also many parts of curriculums are focused on trust and interpersonal skills. Internal networking is also important. Jeroen talks about his litigation practice and the mentoring program the firm built: a reverse mentoring program whereby partners are mentored by more junior lawyers or by business professionals who have a different background. He talks about second opinions, the corporate culture where trust-building is essential, Fons Trompenaars’ high and low trust cultures, and the role of intimacy between client and the lawyer.
Our today’s guest is Ad Antonisse, Director Market Access and External Affairs of AstraZeneca in The Netherlands. He talks about AstraZeneca as a producer of personalized medicine for cancer treatments and the company’s public-private relationship with the inventor of the Covid-19 vaccine, Oxford University in the UK. Despite being in the middle of a pandemic, he doesn’t consider being in the crosshairs of the public eye as a burden. The company makes sure its vaccine product is available all over the world at affordable prices.
Due to laws and strict regulations, the company has very limited space to respond to questions that arise around the vaccine and its availability. The company does its best to produce the vaccine and maintain its quality on a non-profit basis during the pandemic. He replies to the question about compulsory licensing. In his view, complex manufacturing processes and quality issues make it very hard for anyone else but trusted partners to produce the vaccine.
Producing a vaccine a little more than a year after the breakout of the pandemic is a remarkable achievement of science.
Growing distrust in society also affects the pharmaceutical industry. He talks about the role of his department to discuss with politicians issues about cost-benefit and how medicine is produced.
(The interview took place on April 26, in the middle of the second coronavirus wave)
Interview with professor Guido Möllering, director and Chair of Management at the Reinhard Mohn Institute at the Witten-Herdecke University in Witten, Germany, and editor-in-chief of the “Journal of Trust Research”. Is trust a useful subject for research as it is so elusive and hard to define? We talk about his 2006 book “Trust, Reason, Routine, Reflexivity". Inspired by the German sociologist Georg Simmel he reflects on trust as the ability to believe in someone without being able to really say what it is you believe. He mentions trusting versus trust and how pharmaceutical companies and the HIV/AIDS community finally got to trust each other. About the “trust gap” where longtime business partners like Apple and Qualcomm and Microsoft and Intel had to readjust their relationship, once very successful but went sour because they realized too late that their relationships had become locked-in.
In this interview, Jaya Klara Brekke talks about the politics of blockchain technology and whether it solves the problem of power, how a technology that was meant to be “neutral” tends to ignore the fact that engineers and developers making real decisions on how the system should be designed, thereby quickly becoming politically contentious.
She frames the term “Hippocratic Oath” making people more conscious of the actual decisions taking place in the design of blockchain. She talks about the bitcoin blockchain technology and the competitive process in bitcoin mining which creates a game that assumes a race for profit.
Interview with Judit Neurink, an independent journalist who lived and worked in the Middle East. Trust is of great importance in her field of work. When training young journalists in Iraq she warned them that if they lie to their public, people will lose their trust. But many had no choice, as they worked for party media only interested in the truth of the party. Talking to Yezidi victims who escaped from the Islamic terror group ISIS, she was appalled to see some international colleagues breaking the trust the young women showed by talking about their ordeal. It had direct consequences for other journalists too, as many women no longer felt like talking to them. This problem she currently encounters is a result of the distrust fake news has sowed towards journalists and regular media. As a result, people become less well informed, so less able to make the right decisions. She concludes that now, plain and simple, honest and trustworthy information that is not biased or opinionated is more important than ever.
Interview with Jacoba Sieders, Independent digital identity thought leader. In her view, controls and architectures to protect our important information need to be adjusted to a new reality of “zero trust”: data is distributed and in transit everywhere, across safe and unsafe devices and hyperconnected ecosystems. Identity- and access management is the guardian angel at the front door of systems and touches on all digital processes. Ideally, user convenience, privacy, and security are equally robust. Fundamental security by design is a must. Prescribing security levels through legislation is not easy, because security cannot be measured, and risk levels are volatile. Incidents teach that governments should probably be audited and tested for security as heavily as banks.
Interview with Geert Corstens. As a former President of the Netherlands Supreme Court, he made great efforts to improve and maintain trust in the judiciary by advocating more openness in publishing judgments, press summaries, and giving interviews, which was not always wholeheartedly applauded by his colleagues. The legislative branch of government and the executive, two parts of the Trias Politica, have financial means and can enforce even by using force if need be, the third part, the judiciary, has only the trust of the people. Courts have to constantly show their independence and impartiality. Judges have to be both modest and courageous when the executive does not obey the law or when the legislator enacts a law contrary to an international treaty. Sometimes judges have to step in where politicians fail to agree but society requires a decision, giving the example of euthanasia, where the Supreme Court decided in a case in the 1980s setting out circumstances where euthanasia is allowed. He denies there is anything like clear “dikastocracy” in The Netherlands.
Interview with Ian Shapiro, professor of Political Science at Yale University. In his view, the underlying problem of increased mistrust is economic: the disappearance of long-term employment security, the decline of middle-class incomes, and the downward mobility of many middle-class people. A great motivator of action is the fear of experiencing a loss, which fear is exploited for political gain. In Europe, it is the failure of left-of-center parties to protect their constituencies and the inability of the traditional social democratic mainstream parties to deliver the sort of protections that they used to provide. This is all linked to economic factors, the decline of industrial jobs, the collapse of labor unions, globalization, jobs going to technology. That is causing mistrust in political institutions which is exploited by political entrepreneurs as a way of getting to power, resulting in populism. It is a failure of the political, educational, and economic system to deliver security that is breeding mistrust. He talks about the cause of polarization in political parties and the complacency of businesses while desperate people are being mobilized by politicians who are going to do things those businesses don’t like: immigration, trade wars, protectionism.
The interview covers also his newly published book “The Wolf at the Door” which he wrote with Michael Graetz, about rising inequality as a threat to democracy.
Interview with Charles H. Green, co-author of the seminal book “The Trusted Advisor” (2001) now celebrating its 20th anniversary. He talks about the trust paradoxes, the shift from trust as a personal attribute to reputation and branding. Is making a genuine connection harder using on-screen connectivity tools? He reflects on the Trust Equation which hasn’t changed over the last 20 years. Potentially the most powerful component, “intimacy” (feeling emotional security in dealing with a person) is more important than most professionals realize and who feel more confident about sharing content than showing intimacy. He reflects on the importance of listening as a profound method of trust, and the future of the Trust Equation.
We interview Steven Heywood, General Manager of Edelman in The Netherlands, known for the annual Edelman Trust Barometer. The 2021 findings of the Edelman Trust Barometer show an alarming divergence in trust between two distinct groups of people, the “informed public” and the mass population, which has a much lower level of trust. A minority of those surveyed practice “good information hygiene’ which includes news management, avoiding echo chambers, verify information and not amplifying unvetted information. Steven explores how this global “infodemic” has driven trust in all news sources to record lows with social media and owned media the least trusted. He talks about the weaponisation of fake news, the need for Action Communications, and how brands should take real steps to change the way they service their customers and take part in society.
Interview with Paul van Lange, Professor of Psychology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam on trust. He discusses the importance of social contact, which he and his co-author Simon Columbus frame in terms of “Vitamin S”, arguing that brief encounters with strangers can yield some happiness, an insight that is important for (young) adults during this era of COVID-19 lockdowns. He views trust in terms of accepting dependence on others and anticipating some critical level of pro-sociality from others. Norm violations by other people pose a challenge to trust, including norm violations enacted by strangers. Yet most people have developed a capacity to navigate to a relatively high level of trust, a default that we are often are not aware of. Like well-being, we start to ponder about trust in others when it is seriously challenged by others’ norm-violations. Various other intriguing questions are addressed. For example, what are the benefits of one-on-one interactions in pairs over interactions in larger groups? Why do we seek interactions with like-minded people? And why do we sometimes disclose more private information with a taxi-driver than with a friend?
Interview with two partners of EY, the global accounting and consulting firm, Will Weerts and Tonny Dekker. Risk management is a key element of any management role. The ability to identify risks before they arise, and then plan a strategy to deal with them is paramount. The consequences of not doing this could be a business failure.
In this interview, both reflect on the importance of risk management, the challenges, and the opportunities, and its relation with trust. They talk about the “Three Lines of Defence model”, IP risks, and the importance of resilience. They describe the “Catch-22” situation risks managers find themselves in, as risk management is too-often treated as a matter of compliance., whereas internal audit is -especially in the US - focused on financial control.
Today’s guest is Kent Grayson, associate professor of Marketing at Kellogg School of Management and co-founder of The Trust Project. Many academics study trust but there is a need to bridge the language used by academics and business people and practitioners. Although every discipline has a different perspective of trust, when you pass the language, we are talking about the same thing: what encourages someone to make themselves vulnerable and to rely on another person for something important.
Marketing is not just advertising, or how to sell a product or service via social media or communication. At business schools, students learn that marketing communication is the final step in the marketing process. It is about understanding the target customer sufficiently well, their goals, problems, or needs. Trust is essential for that understanding. You have to find a way to trust what the consumer is telling you so that you can be confident that your solution will solve their needs.
Generation Z, when asked are there any brands or business you trust, they will talk passionately about a handful of organizations. Kent speaks about the “wack-a-mole” challenge in marketing, the efforts of truthfully communicate with your customers, the role of influencers, about honesty and sincerity, and the relation between trust and transparency. Trust is about making sure you understand the other party's motives, that you believe they have your best interests at heart, and telling you the truth and keep your promises.
Interview with Harvard Professor Barry R. Bloom. He speaks about trust and public health aspects and of the Covid-19 virus vaccines, its development, and distribution, about the differences with developing vaccines against diseases like polio, influenza, and pneumonia. He blames social media for causing distrust as people think that science has been fast in producing a vaccine in just 11 months since we first experienced the virus. He points out that more than 10 years of investment in science are underlying the new vaccines (“there is no vaccine for misinformation”).
From a public-health perspective, the nationalistic races between countries that can vaccinate first are completely irrelevant. Vaccination is not just a matter of implementation as careful research and data are necessary to keep up with new mutants of the vaccine, as are questions about who can produce the vaccines, syringes, and other equipment and who can effectively distribute the vaccines and who can do coaching, and providing information on who gets the first and second shot, all things that are very tough to organize, due to the fact that each state and country have their own health systems. This requires a lot of planning, which is not a trivial undertaking.
The new mutant variations of the virus that appeared in the UK, South Africa, Nigeria and parts of Europe lead us into a “Darwinian game”. Those vaccine variants may cause a dramatic rise in infections, but the good news is that given current science pharma companies need potentially as short as 6 weeks to produce new vaccines that protect against those new virus mutations.
Public health is good at dealing with science and molecular biology and genetic engineering, but where it is not so good at is the science of human behavior. His biggest concern is how local and national leaders can inspire trust while facing distrust anywhere in the world and how they might be unable to motivate people to change their behavior and to protect themselves and everyone else and at the same time realize that until everyone is protected we all remain susceptible to the virus.
Interview with Hélène Vletter-van Dort. She is a professor in Financial Law and Corporate Governance at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, Netherlands. She is a member of the Supervisory Boards of financial services company NN (formerly known as Nationale Nederlanden) and The Dutch Public Broadcasting Organization NPO as well as Chair of the Supervisory Board of Intertrust NV. She speaks about commitment and culture and is inspired by Ben Horowitz’s book: “What You Do is Who Your Are”. At the center of her work is the importance of corporate culture and the relationship with corporate values. Culture is not what is on a corporate website but what really lives in a company. She talks about UBER, a company that went through a thorough self-reflection on its corporate culture and her experience with a hospital where she was overseeing the board.
Interview with Jaap Winter, one of Europe’s leading experts on corporate governance on the importance of trust. He contributed to the first corporate governance rules in The Netherlands, “Code Tabaksblat”. He talks about the “Agency theory” and “substantial variable pay” arrangements for corporate executives, about acting in self-interest and how the wrong incentives create mistrust, which, in the words of Harvard professor Michael Jensen, would only led agents (executives) to “lie twice”. Trust is on the other side of a bureaucratic model, but trust is not enough, discipline is important. He reflects on the two models of INSEAD and London School of Economics professor Sumantra Ghoshal: the Dark-Calcutta model and the Spring-at-Fontainebleau model. Trust is easier to establish if there is proximity, something that often lacks with shareholders who are far away the company, almost anonymous. In that situation it is difficult to establish trust. There is a need for systems and controls, yet he is not in favor to answer to financial and other crises with even more rules and regulations, rather building an international reflective mission leading to a new corporate culture, like Siemens did after the bribery scandal that hit the company in 2008. For that you need discipline and a core element is trust, built through honesty and speaking “face-to-face”, “as if one would speak with a friend” (citing Exodus 33:11 where God speaks directly to Mozes).
Dr. Balázs Bodó, researcher at the Institute of Information Law at the University of Amsterdam, describes 3 dimensions of “technology-mediated trust”. The known and unknown risks of new technologies, how we interact with these technologies, and whether they are trustworthy. Global institutions – moving at a slow pace - have failed to establish trust that they are capable of handling worldwide challenges like climate change, mass human displacement, and global pandemics, or other forms of crises. This lack of international leadership leads to a trust crisis. The emergency of new technology platforms – or “trust mediators”- facilitate coordination and establish trust between strangers through various methods. Platforms, such as Uber, or Airbnb manage reputations; blockchain technologies try to minimize the need for trust; AI systems promise to reduce future uncertainties. Balázs touches on the relationship between risks and trust and the “costs of trust”. He contrasts technologies where trust was verifiable, such as the workings of nuclear reactors, and digital technologies where it is much more difficult to establish their trustworthiness. Unlike global organizations and governments, technological trust mediators may be able to establish trust among users, but we must think about how they can do it in a verifiable and trustworthy manner.
Interview with Marike Westra, Chief Communications Officer at COFRA, a privately held 6th generation family business on the central role of trust in communications. She believes communication is fundamental in creating trust in both business and brands. The interview touches upon the role of social media who have “democratized” society, even if bad actors try to misinform, on the importance of transparency in doing responsible business. She reminds us that things that are closer to you, you tend to trust more. Marike further talks about how employers can influence the direction of their company and the challenges in keeping trust in brands and the importance of data: “we should be data-informed, not data-driven”. Transparency in communications is key to trust.
Interview with management consultant and former SVP at Royal AholdDelhaize, Kiki Stiemer. She talks about her research while at INSEAD, the role of trust in relation to unsolicited advice senior managers (CEO’s and Board Members) receive from an employee or external advisor. How does the famous trust formula of Maister, Green & Galford (in: “The Trusted Advisor”) work out in case of unsolicited advice? How do managers react when they receive advise they did not ask for? In her research Kiki Stiemer interviewed Netherlands CEO’s of large companies and noted the difference between their responses and the hard reality. In this interview she touches on the role of trust, as well as the importance of credibility, reliability, intimacy and self-orientation when giving advice.
We interview Rick Schmitz, CEO of Netherlands based LTO Network, provider of a secure, blockchain based, GDPR and compliant platform for companies that rely on trustworthy contract certification, data sharing, process automation, and collaboration. We talk about the importance of trust for blockchain solutions.
In the interview we ask Rick about the relationship between blockchain, artificial intelligence, internet of things and the role of trust. Blockchain adds a trust layer on data. Do we need to embrace or fear AI? What role plays LTO Network in providing trust to parties who share information and collaboration?
Over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data (2.5 with 17 zeros!) are created every single day. Facebook, Google, Amazon have vast amounts of data. Do we trust the data being used in a way we can control or consent to?
How much influence do we have on data owned by Data Management Platforms? Companies should set clear principles on how they use customer data and should be transparent with regard to artificial intelligence and the way customers can control their data.
Without trust, nothing works
What is trust? It is harder then you think, to define trust is not as easy as it sounds. It depends on who you ask. We try to get some insights in the meaning of trust.
Introduction to the TrustTalk Podcast and website (www.trusttalk.co) with everything about Trust. News, interviews, blogs, articles and podcasts on different subjects with one major theme: TRUST
ywBWQj3OWnTWHCopCZff