In my work with organizations globally, I have seen that trust is not a “soft” metric; it is a hard economic driver. When trust is low, every interaction comes with a “tax” of bureaucracy and skepticism. When trust is high, we experience an innovation dividend that accelerates the Eight I’s of Infinite Innovation.

“Measurement is never neutral. It shapes behavior, reinforces values, and ultimately determines whether innovation survives or suffocates. To measure innovation truly, we must stop counting outputs and start measuring the soil of trust in which those ideas grow.”

— Braden Kelley

The Trust Dividend vs. The Trust Tax

In Human-Centered Innovation, we must recognize that change happens at the speed of belief. If your employees do not trust the leadership’s vision, they will not contribute their Intrinsic Genius — that intersection of competence, joy, and drive. Instead, they will operate in a state of innovation theater, going through the motions while protecting themselves from the perceived risks of failure.

Measuring trust requires looking at the “friction” within your innovation pipeline. Are decisions being stalled by excessive committees? Are team members afraid to share “unpleasant facts” about a failing prototype? These are quantifiable delays. By reducing this friction, we increase the velocity of learning, which is the ultimate metric for any innovation project.

Case Study 1: The Safety Turnaround at Alcoa

When Paul O’Neill took over as CEO of Alcoa in 1987, he didn’t focus on profit margins or R&D spend as his primary metric. Instead, he focused on worker safety. To many analysts, this seemed like a distraction from the core business of making aluminum. However, O’Neill understood that to innovate, he needed to build a Value Ecosystem rooted in trust.

By making safety the non-negotiable priority, he signaled a deep commitment to the well-being of every employee. This created a transparent communication loop where workers felt safe to point out flaws in the manufacturing process without fear of retribution. The result? As trust increased, operational excellence followed. Alcoa’s market value increased by five times during his tenure. The “value of trust” here was measured in the elimination of the silos that previously prevented the flow of innovative ideas from the factory floor to the executive suite.

Case Study 2: Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and the Power of Small Groups

In 2007, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals faced a crisis when a top drug lost 70% of its sales to generics. To survive, they needed to transform their manufacturing across 25 global sites. Rather than a top-down mandate (which usually triggers the 70% failure rate of change programs), they focused on building trust through small, loosely connected groups.

They started with one “keystone change” at a single facility. By focusing on a small win, they built local trust and proved the value of the new methodology. This trust then “cascaded” to other sites. Because the employees saw the success and felt respected in the process, the adoption rate skyrocketed. Wyeth saw a 25% reduction in costs and a significant increase in workforce motivation. The measurement of trust wasn’t a survey; it was the adoption rate and the speed of implementation of the new lean practices.

How to Quantify the Intangible

To measure the value of trust in your own innovation projects, I suggest focusing on these three pillars:

• Information Transparency: Measure the lag time between a “fatal flaw” being discovered by a team and it being reported to leadership. In high-trust cultures, this is nearly instantaneous.
• Experimentation Velocity: Track how many experiments are run per quarter. High trust leads to more psychological safety, which encourages teams to take the “leaps of faith” necessary for radical innovation.
• Adoption Speed: Use my Change Planning Canvas to track how quickly stakeholders move from awareness to advocacy. If trust is high, the “Value Translation” phase requires less effort.

Measuring the Value of Trust in Innovation Projects

Trust is often treated as a soft variable in innovation. It is discussed in leadership offsites, nodded at in strategy decks, and invoked after projects fail. Yet when it comes time to allocate budget, prioritize initiatives, or evaluate performance, trust rarely appears on the scorecard.

This is a mistake.

Innovation is not merely a function of ideas and investment. It is a function of belief. Belief that experimentation will not be punished. Belief that leaders will listen. Belief that customers are telling the truth. Belief that data has not been manipulated to protect careers. Without trust, innovation slows. With trust, it compounds.

“Trust is the invisible infrastructure of innovation. You can’t see it on a balance sheet, but you can see its absence in every stalled initiative.”

— Braden Kelley

The question is not whether trust matters. The question is how to measure its value.

Trust as an Innovation Multiplier

Trust operates as a multiplier on three critical dimensions of innovation:

• Speed — How quickly teams move from insight to experiment to iteration.
• Risk Appetite — The willingness to explore uncertain territory.
• Collaboration Quality — The depth and honesty of cross-functional engagement.

When trust is low, approval cycles lengthen, defensive behaviors increase, and experimentation narrows. When trust is high, friction decreases and learning accelerates.

To measure the value of trust, we must link it to outcomes that executives already care about: cycle time, cost of delay, employee engagement, customer retention, and innovation yield.

Quantifying Trust: Practical Metrics

Trust can be translated into measurable indicators across three categories:

1. Behavioral Metrics

• Rate of idea submission per employee.
• Frequency of cross-functional experiments.
• Percentage of projects with documented learning reviews.

2. Operational Metrics

• Average decision cycle time.
• Number of approval layers required for pilot funding.
• Time between failure and next experiment iteration.

3. Perceptual Metrics

• Psychological safety survey scores.
• Leadership credibility ratings.
• Customer trust indices tied to innovation launches.

Individually, these metrics are imperfect. Together, they create a composite trust index that can be tracked over time and correlated with innovation performance.

Calculating the Financial Impact

To make trust visible in financial terms, leaders can estimate:

• Cost of Delay Reduction: Faster decision cycles and experimentation lower opportunity costs.
• Retention Value: Increased employee and customer loyalty reduce replacement and acquisition expenses.
• Failure Efficiency: Quicker learning cycles reduce wasted capital on prolonged low-probability initiatives.

For example, if a one-month acceleration in product launch generates $2 million in incremental revenue, and higher trust correlates with that acceleration, trust has measurable economic value.

Trust as a Design Variable

Trust is not a byproduct of culture. It is a design choice.

Leaders design incentive systems. They design review processes. They design communication patterns. Each design decision either strengthens or erodes trust.

When innovation systems punish candor, reward political navigation, or obscure decision criteria, trust declines. When systems reward learning, clarify expectations, and distribute authority appropriately, trust grows.

Human-centered change requires that we treat trust not as sentiment but as system architecture.

Building a Trust Dashboard

An effective trust dashboard integrates:

• Quarterly psychological safety surveys.
• Innovation pipeline velocity metrics.
• Cross-functional collaboration frequency data.
• Customer adoption and retention indicators.

Over time, patterns emerge. Leaders begin to see that dips in trust scores often precede declines in experimentation rates. Increases in transparency frequently correlate with improved launch performance.

This visibility shifts trust from abstraction to accountability.

Conclusion

Innovation thrives where trust is present. It stalls where trust is absent. While trust may feel intangible, its effects are concrete and measurable.

Organizations that intentionally measure trust gain a strategic advantage. They reduce friction, accelerate learning, and amplify the return on innovation investment.

In a world of increasing complexity and algorithmic decision-making, trust becomes even more valuable. It is the foundation that allows people to take risks, share truth, and collaborate across boundaries.

Innovation does not fail because people lack ideas. It fails because people lack confidence in the systems meant to support those ideas.

Measure trust. Design for trust. Lead with trust. The value will reveal itself.

Ultimately, if you are looking to get to the future first, you cannot afford the weight of a low-trust organization. You must design conditions where time stops bullying us and where people feel empowered to illuminate paths previously hidden by the friction of fear.