Experts at ESADE: Now is the best time to build digital trust
Juan Cartagena, co-founder and CEO of Traity: "People are more predisposed to trust than ever before. The problem is that today's institutions are not trustworthy"
Link: Trusting and Trustworthy: Manufacturing Trust in the Digital Age
"Now is the time to discuss what digital trust is and how it can be manufactured. If you wait, it might be too late," declared ESADE researcher Liliana Arroyo during the presentation of Trusting and Trustworthy. Manufacturing Trust in the Digital Age, a new study that she coordinated for ESADE's Institute for Social Innovation in collaboration with the EY Foundation. The report presentation, held on ESADE's Madrid campus, also featured the participation of David Murillo, Lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences at ESADE, Javier Garilleti, Director General of the EY Foundation, and the leaders of two of the main companies analysed in the report: Juan Cartagena, co-founder and CEO of Traity, and Isaac Marcet, founder and CEO of PlayGround.
PlayGround and Traity: from trust to action
Isaac Marcet, founder and CEO of PlayGround, commented: "We've gone from blindly trusting in a world that we believed to be transparent to being suspicious of any proposal. The future is being critical but not letting criticism immobilise us." One characteristic of PlayGround highlighted by the ESADE report is the company's ability to go beyond the hunt for "likes" and shares to actually taking action. "We provide information but we also create a community around each story so that we can go from telling to doing," commented Mr. Marcet. "Nowadays, issues are more complex than ever before, so the media tend to simplify their messages." Mr. Marcet noted that PlayGround is developing a new deep-learning technology that will direct users to the best forms of social action related to each news item. "The key is to put the big players on the ropes and activate the Internet in a scalable way," he added.
The next speaker was Juan Cartagena, co-founder and CEO of Traity, a company specialised in rating companies' trustworthiness on the basis of their digital footprints. Mr. Cartagena insisted that influence must be separated from reputation. "Instagram is first and BlaBlaCar is second, because we put our integrity in their hands," he explained. "We must do away with the asymmetry between the information provided by one party and the exposure or risk to another," he added, before noting that this problem often prevents people with fewer resources from growing: "It's like the case of rental deposits, which are synonymous with mistrust." He concluded: "The problem is not with people. People are more predisposed to trust than ever before. The problem is that today's institutions are not trustworthy."
Five variables for measuring innovation in the creation of digital trust and reputation
The report Trusting and Trustworthy: Manufacturing Trust in the Digital Age forms part of the Antenna for Social Innovation, an observatory of ESADE's Institute for Social Innovation that analyses the five key factors of social innovation – social impact, economic sustainability, inter-sector collaboration, types of innovation, and scalability and replicability – in various companies in a particular industry.
In this case, the study focused on the ways in which PlayGround, Traity, CoMoodle (a collaborative economy platform that allows local authorities, community groups and business sectors to share assets) and nearly a dozen other companies apply the five factors of social innovation in their business activity. According to David Murillo, Lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences at ESADE and co-author of the report, the study shows that "the phenomenon of trust takes on new meanings in the context of the digital economy". Codes of familiarity – the fact that you know someone or recognise a familiar trait that allows you to gauge whether the person deserves your trust – have become impersonal. The most direct way to reverse this is to provide information – such as images and verified (and verifiable) data – to fill the void. The study also shows that, when this information includes links to personal networks, the person's trustworthiness increases even more.
The report highlights the importance of measuring reputation with scores or comments as a way of controlling two differential aspects: identity and persuasion of the "masses". These mechanisms are similar to those used in offline reputation control, but in the digital world they become amplified and manifest themselves in what other users think, value and share. The study concludes: "The trustworthiness of your digital identity lies in the hands of the people with whom you interact, share, buy, sell or exchange. The information you emit is eclipsed by the reputation built for you by others. And this eclipse, when it occurs in the digital world, becomes public – in real time and permanently."
