Trust, the new key to business

Summary of the digital event on how trust is becoming the basis of new business models.

The business models of the future are based on the trust of users and stakeholders. This was the focus of the debate that Javier Creus, one of the main strategists in the field of collaborative economy and citizen innovation, and Florent Bannwarth, Operations Manager of BlablaCar Spain, held at our digital event on April 6 on how trust is the new key to business.

The most outstanding ideas that were discussed in this digital event were:

1.- The current environment: Challenges and levers for change.
The pandemic demonstrates the fragility of social and economic systems and, at the same time, the speed at which we can change. The successive global crises of the last decade have made distrust systemic. The social contract in force since the end of the Second World War has been broken and there is no institution or any sector that, on its own, is capable of proposing and solving the problem of trust, because none has the social credit or the capacity to do so. For Javier Creus, it is not so much a matter of restoring trust, but of regenerating it.

The way to regenerate trust is to rethink the purpose of all institutions, agencies and economic agents. Rethinking why? and the for what? of all social agents. The challenge is to set new purposes, generating new relationships to leverage the sustainable development of society. And technological innovation is a lever for this.

The other lever for change is social plasticity that the pandemic has also revealed. Human beings are capable of adapting quickly and reconverting resources according to needs: recombining what we have to produce better results.

2.- The role of citizens.
In this situation of systemic distrust, it is the citizens who are capable of structuring alternative forms of trust. It is the citizens who generate new forms of trust, relying on technological innovation.

3.- Rebuilding trust through technology and communities

Connectivity, digitalization and new technologies are enabling relationships of interpersonal trust that were unimaginable a few years ago. The combination of technological innovation and citizen action provokes 3 new types of trust:
  1. Trust in the open. Open content platforms. For example, Wikipedia. We collaborate to share knowledge. Click here to learn more about how trust works in the open.
  2. Peer-to-peer trust: For example, Airbnb or Blablacar. Based on confidence indicators provided by a platform. Here there are a multitude of new business models that have been created thanks to this type of trust. Click here to learn more about peer-to-peer trust.
  3. Trust in the blockchain: It is the technology that imbibes trust, so we do not need to know or trust “the other”. This technology was born in the world of cryptocurrencies but has become a cornerstone for new business models based on the new trust.
In all 3 cases, it is about digital trust, which is allowing the creation of new forms of relationship and new business models, and in both 3 there is a common denominator in all success stories (such as Wikipedia, Bitcoin, Blablacar or Airbnb): The community of people behind it.
The technology behind digital trust solutions fosters the creation of increasingly stronger and more connected communities, creating a virtuous circle that feeds innovation.

If you want to know more about the importance of trust, the challenges and solutions to increase it, we invite you to read the report “Trust in the digital age”.