Technology enables Trust-Leap: A TED talk by Rachel Botsman
Continuing from last week, today I will cover a TED talk by Rachel Botsman. If you have about 17 minutes, you can listen to this talk on Ted by clicking here. Else please read the following few lines to get the gist of it. Rachel Botsman is a recognized expert on how collaboration and trust enabled by digital technologies will change the way we live, work, bank and consume.
New Era of Trust is here
Rachel says that trust underlies all that we do, from the very basic things like trusting your kids to switch off the lights before they sleep to making multi billion dollar business transactions. She says that over time trust has been evolving.
The first phase of Trust was Local: When trust was build between people, based on close contact and personal history of transactions. Words and deeds, mattered. This phase earmarked direct People 2 People business.
The second phase of Trust was Institutional: When business started happening across much bigger geographical domains and the chance to know each person that we do business started reducing. People started putting there trust in institutions, these institutions are intermediaries who help us in carrying out our business by facilitating the trust factor. Off-course they charge us for it. Look at the example of Banks. They exist between borrowers and lenders and make money from connecting the two. Trust also manifested into “Brand” and people trust the quality of product or service and started paying premium for certain products. This phase earmarked People 2 Institution Business.
The third phase of Trust is Distributed: She quotes the example of Bla-Bla car and Uber and Didi to show that people have now taken another leap of trust and started trusting strangers. This new phenomenon has been enabled by technology. We are moving into again People 2 People Business but enabled by technological platforms.
The distributed trust is “Transparent”, “Inclusive”, “Decentralized”, “Accountable” and “Bottom UP”
Once the Trust leap happens, it does not go back.
As leaders, we must be cognizant of the changes and use them to help our teams and organizations to grow. I hope you can gain from this insight.
Stay tuned for more next week.