<ul>
<li>Trust does play a meaningful role between success and failure of business ecosystems.</li>
<li>It wasn't always the final nail in the coffin, but it was relevant [enough] to send more than half to the graveyard.</li>
<li>Many of the failed ecosystems made the mistake of naively assuming that cooperation anchored on trust would spontaneously emerge between complete strangers.</li>
<li>When we examined the successful ecosystems, we found the following trust tools embedded in them.</li>
</ul>

The Trust Tools Of Your Business Ecosystem

Ecosystems who are trustworthy make past and present behavior visible to everyone participating in the platform. And that's the reason why you feel a pit in your stomach if you've ever booked an Airbnb with a host who is new to the platform and doesn't have any reviews yet.

Trust Tool: Transparency

Successful ecosystems encourage cooperation through rewards, or by motivating participants to interact with each other in a positive manner. eBay and Amazon use reputation as an incentive. If you're a seller, and you have a good reputation, you can charge higher prices for your products.

Trust Tool: Incentives

Trustworthy ecosystems formalize a relationship with all participants through contracts. If you've ever clicked the box "I agree to the terms and conditions," you signed an ecosystem contract.

Trust Tool: Contracts 

Not forced control, but more like a gentle guidance, like an invisible hand nudging you in the right direction. Successful ecosystems shape the behavior of participants so the kind of cooperation required will emerge in the platform. Uber does control well, and it dictates to the driver the best route to take, so the passenger trusts the driver will not take the longer route just to make some more money.

Trust Tool: Control

Many of the successful ecosystems define very well who is allowed in and who can be kicked out of the platform for bad behavior. HopSkipDrive does access well. It takes the drivers through a strict background check before they are hired into the platform. They also have a zero tolerance policy, which is superclear to everyone, so drivers know they can be terminated if they are caught illegally using their mobile phones while driving.

Trust Tool: Access 

How does the platform handle mishaps or prevent them from happening in the first place? Did you know that LiveAuctioneers, an auctions platform for art, collectibles and antiques, has a broad protection program that guarantees payments on the platform? That's an example of mitigation.

Trust Tool: Mitigation 

You don't need all the tools to be successful.  So how do you pick? It depends on the kind of ecosystem you design. If interactions among the participants are key, like in most social-media ecosystems, you will require a combination of access, transparency and control in order to be successful.

Trust Tools: Conclusion

TED Talk Subtitles and Transcript: Why do we trust some companies and not others? Using real-world examples, digital trust advisor Marcos Aguiar decodes this make-or-break quality -- and offers seven tools to help leaders design a foundation of trust into their business ecosystems in order to achieve long-term success.