Trust Works

Abstract

This chapter presents a trust framework for facilitating equitable access to opportunity in an ingepreneurial ecosystem. An ingepreneur is “a person who engages in entrepreneurial activity with an emphasis on the innovative aspects of enterprise development while infusing creativity into every phase of the business development process. Ingepreneurs demonstrate a concern for influencing the socioeconomic trajectory of members of a select geographic or demographic community” (Williams & Klugh). Trust frameworks facilitate relationship-building between non-profit, private, and university partners, where historical distrust exists. Social migration and education are used as the context for the evolution of institutional and organizational distrust potential impediments to ingepreneurial advancement. While opportunities arise, distrust due to perceived and actual inequities creates barriers to collaborative economic development. The “trust framework for facilitating equitable access to ingepreneurial opportunity” offers a tool for potentially facilitating relational innovation.