Data or Trust? Why Trust Is Our Biggest Corporate Problem

It’s a line we’ve heard over and over in movies and books. We’ve used it, or some variation of it, ourselves. That’s because there are many aspects of life that we simply have to take with a certain degree of trust. We trust that our brakes will work, we trust that our kids aren’t sneaking out of the house at night, that our doctor isn’t a quack. In short, even in the small, mundane aspects of our lives, we rely on others to be honest with us. One could even say that trust is the most valuable thing in society. But wait! Don’t we always go on about how ‘data is the new gold’? Yes, and that’s true. Data is the most valuable commodity. Trust, however, is not merely a commodity, a resource that can be bought and sold. Trust makes it possible to buy and sell in the first place. In order for data to be a valuable commodity in the first place, we have to be able to trust it.  This is even more apparent in the more macro aspects of life. We trust our parents to tell us the truth about life. We woul