Mike Casey, US Head of Strategic Planning at Edelman presented insights from the 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer as part of a sponsored breakfast at the ANA Brand Masters Conference last week.

“Building trust is essential to successfully bringing new products and services to market, and building trust in new business innovations requires that companies demonstrate clear personal and societal benefits, behave with integrity and engage with customers and stakeholders throughout the process.”

Key takeaways include:

• Search engines are the most trusted form of media for millennials for breaking news.
• Trust in the technology sector overall and cloud computing in particular is down.
• Engagement is a multiplier, transparency and third-party validation is integral to innovation.  Trusted innovation = [discovery + benefit + integrity] Engagement.
• Brand sustainability and be good do good will win.
• Trust comes alive through great ideas and activations.
• Brands that don’t contribute to greater good lose trust .

 In the age of innovation, it is more important than ever to focus on the greater good.  Businesses must bring an agility and nimbleness with a multi-stakeholder and global view for discovery that offers a personal and societal benefit. They must embody attributes that build trust in any company, which is accomplished chiefly by having ethical business practices, managing risk, treating employees well and operating responsibly as a good corporate citizen. This will lead to trusted innovation–the kind of innovation that has the best odds of success.