Trust versus Risk Taking
At the Creative Capital Conference last week I joined a session on 'Open Innovation' led by Frans Nauta of Kennisland and the Dutch Innovation Platform.
Frans kicked the session of with the question which words we associated with 'Open Innovation'. The group came up with things like, curiousity, passion, trust, risk taking, making mistakes and other terms. What was curious to notice for me is that Frans Nauta took Trust and Risk Taking as opposites.
To me they are very intimately linked, not opposites. The difference is in seeing Trust as an action or as an object/commodity. If I use the term trust as equal to predictability I use it as an object. Having a large amount of trust in someone then means that I know how she will behave in a certain situation. However if I use trust as an action, then trust is what I do when I am risking something. In the former trust and risk are opposites, in the latter trust is taking risks.
When we are to realize our creative potential in a knowledge economy then I think treating trust and risks as opposites won't help us forward, especially not in a generally risk avoiding society like the Netherlands. Johnnie Moore explained trust as a verb very eloquently at the KnowledgeBoard NGO workshop in November 2003.
PermalinkTrust as a verb would seem to embody the concept of faith, too.
Posted by: weaverluke at March 20, 2005 7:53 PMCould well be. Faith in ones own and other's abilities comes to mind.
Posted by: Ton Zijlstra at March 20, 2005 9:05 PMAll right, I get it! :-)
The issue here is that you have two kinds of trust. And, as you already stated, that you can perceive risk taking as something negative as opposed to something positive.
If you translate this to an organisation:
- There is Trust, as in 'knowing' that someone will follow certain routines to get a job done, and will know when to stop and ask other people for advice when the task at hand is too much for his/her capabilities. Predictability.
- And then there is Trust, as in having confidence that the person you are trusting with something will take responsibility for it. That's having faith in someone (or something).
You could also see it as the difference between action and reaction. Trust as predictability (where I would say you don't need any trust at all) is looking to the past to predict the future. It is reactive, as it is the result of observation.
Trust as action is proactive, and used to sound out possibilities. Or in Johnnie Moore's words: trust is the risk I take to find out who the trustworthy relations are. Trustworthiness then equals trust as predictability.
Also see Trust me, I know what I'm doing at Knowledge Board.
Posted by: Ton Zijlstra at March 27, 2005 11:01 AM
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