By: Terrance Smith, Bloomberg Public Innovation Fellow

Trust is the bedrock upon which effective and innovative governments are built. 

This message is at the core of my practitioner brief, “Navigating Trust: Paving the Path to Public Innovation,” which delves into the relationship between trust and public innovation. 

In order for local governments to meet complex challenges, addressing the needs of residents with dynamic characteristics, and innovating effectively, trustworthiness is essential. But unlike innovation in the private sector – where the ethos is to move fast and break things – the public sector must innovate while delivering resident services in a way that maintains healthy trust levels. This creates a tension between reliability and necessary risk-taking.

“Navigating Trust” offers insights on how to manage this tension. Drawing from my experience as the first Director of Innovation for the city of Mobile, Alabama, and my research as a Bloomberg Public Innovation Fellow at Johns Hopkins, this brief serves as a practical guide for those working in and with public institutions, offering insights on how trust can drive public innovation.

The Trustworthiness of Public Institutions: Three Key Elements

Trust is a dynamic force essential for collaboration, risk-taking, and ultimately, innovation. Public institutions that lack trust struggle to engage with their communities and implement solutions to complex challenges. Rather than viewing trust as an abstract idea, the brief emphasizes the trustworthiness of public institutions.

To be considered trustworthy, public institutions must focus on three key elements: ability, humanity, and integrity. They must deliver on their commitments (ability), act without causing harm (humanity), and operate transparently and ethically (integrity). These principles lay the groundwork for building and maintaining trust, which is crucial for fostering innovation.

A New Framework: The Trust-Innovation Spectrum

This brief explores the “Trust-Innovation Spectrum,” a new framework that illustrates the nuanced relationship between trust and innovation in public institutions. This spectrum ranges from cynicism, where trust is absent, to complete trust, where excessive confidence can stifle critical thinking and innovation.

Between these extremes lies the “Peak Performance Trust Zone,” where a balanced level of trust and healthy skepticism enables creativity, risk-taking, and collaboration to flourish. This zone is the sweet spot where public innovation thrives.

Designing for Trust to Foster Innovation

Achieving this balance requires public institutions to address factors that erode trust on one end of the spectrum and stifle creativity on the other. Practices like establishing feedback loops, promoting psychological safety, and encouraging diverse perspectives are crucial strategies covered in this brief.

Through real-world examples of cities successfully navigating the trust spectrum, readers can learn how trust is essential to deliver more effective public services. From Barranquilla, Colombia, which built trust by prioritizing investments in infrastructure and involving residents in neighborhood projects; to Mobile, Alabama, which transformed its Parks and Recreation Department into a vibrant, trusted hub for residents through human-centered design and community engagement; trust and trustworthiness are at the core of cities’ successful innovation efforts.

By leveraging the knowledge and best practices detailed in the “Navigating Trust: Paving the Path to Public Innovation” and successfully navigating the Trust-Innovation spectrum, practitioners can foster a culture where trust drives innovation, leading to more effective and responsive governance and better outcomes for residents.