After years of crisis - not only linked to the economic downturn - of the Western world, affecting both individuals and the public sphere, trust seems dramatically missing and is among the most heated themes of the contemporary debate on public communication. But, what is trust if not the ability to have an idea on the future?

Ideas first are the foundation of trust. Without an idea - a perspective, something “beyond” to reach and protect - that particular emotional and moral bond among subjects, labelled as “trust”, can’t exist. The challenge is “to mold” this bond in diverse concrete contexts, giving it shape and substance according to the different spheres where trust is achieved.

Let’s think about the idea of entrepreneur. In its original - almost etymological - meaning, an entrepreneur is "the one who takes a risk". Or even better, the one who takes a risk over the future, according to his personal perspective of the future itself. Firmly believing in it, he does something that others don’t want to do or decide not to do, maybe because they fear it or because they have a different attitude or education. In this sense, proposing himself as a "catalyst of ideas" and future, the entrepreneur is a true driving force of trust.

This bond between trust and creativity is not new in human history and it’s not the result of the current hyper-technological society. As Aristotle used to say: on one side there’s the ethos, the attention to morals, and on the other the technè that, in Greek, was meant as the creativity to its highest level and as the ability to create and mold, starting from an idea.

Therefore, today, the weary social body is probably lacking the ability to create systems where ideas can arise, organize themselves and spread with a precise moral vocation, addressed to the very concrete objective of a wellbeing and - why not? - of a happiness built and shared, as the legacy the Kennedy Family left to Americans, today represented by one of its most active heirs.

And maybe, this is also the vocation the dominating digital infrastructure is currently missing with all those great sharing platforms, which risk to be reduced to a mere tool, without a clear ethical inspiration: an empty technology rather than a technè, full of sense. In the end, that’s also the task of a good communication: making the 2.0 web and its social models a formidable way to share ideas on the future and, by means of this sharing, to restore trust.

Franco Pomilio - ICS Chairman