What makes consumers willing to buy a car online, sight unseen? Why are online banks willing to lend thousands of dollars to new customers hundreds of miles away? Why do millions of homeowners allow total strangers to rent their properties for a getaway without ever meeting them face to face? In a word, trust.

As business grows ever more digital—as virtual relationships increasingly become the norm in the post-COVID reality—stakeholder trust becomes as crucial as product or service quality. Nowhere is this truer than in business ecosystems, those dynamic alliances of largely independent economic entities that create products or services that constitute a coherent solution. Ecosystems depend on well-functioning networks of buyers, sellers, and various other parties in between to thrive and grow.

Buyers on an e-commerce marketplace need to know they will receive what they have paid for and that their data won’t be abused. Participants on fundraising platforms need to be protected from fraud. Controls for bad behavior, protocols for resolving disputes, and quality assurances are essential for everything from gig economy platforms to smart, IoT-based ecosystems. For any and all kinds of ecosystems, incentives for members to cooperate are absolutely necessary in order for everyone to reap the benefits of their interactions.

Yet a stunning 85% of ecosystems—even the most promising ones—fail. By that we mean they dissolve, shrink to insignificance, or are bought out for below investment cost. And trust plays a big part. At the same time, as we argued in the first publication of this series, trust is a cornerstone of success for thriving ecosystems.

Through our in-depth analysis of both successful and failed ecosystems—B2C, C2C, and even B2B—we identified the key tools and processes (instruments) by which they engender trust. Instead of using a hit-or-miss approach, ecosystems can apply these findings to forge and maintain trust as they launch, scale, and sustain their business.