How much does trust cost? Are there any tools to create it? How it works when there is a need to bring about commercial success? Can trust between business and government be built consistently?

This is a complex and subtle topic that invites to an extended conversation. Such topics were discussed in mid-July at the online conference “How Much Does Trust Cost?” co-hosted by the Transforma1 media portal.

The panelists were Marcos Aguiar, Managing Director and Senior Partner at Boston Consulting Group, Brazil; Andrey Sharonov, President of Skolkovo Moscow School of Management; Andrey Elinson, Managing Partner at A1 and Vladimir Khristenko, President of Nanolek.

So, how much does trust cost? Vladimir Khristenko voiced his opinion: 

“All of our company’s activities are built on trust. I would say there are three audience levels that it targets: 

1.     Our partners, including international ones, which transfer technology to us. Our mission is to make the best technology available to everyone in our country, and we have built all of our progress in such a way as to bring those technologies to Russia. Large international companies are pretty hard and slow to join any partnerships as they have a lot of policies and in-house regulations. It’s difficult to stat that kind of partnership, but if you keep your commitments, you can stay there for a long time. This is a vital factor for business: in Russia, we all suffer from then situation when things change all the time. Indeed, the legislation is constantly changing, and long-term measures are hard to plan.

2.     It is the nation that is a key partner in our operations. Not for nothing there is a Russian proverb “trust but verify”. So the government says, “Do it and don’t worry about anything,” but what we want that relationship is more specific, we want probably contracts with specific obligations binding on parties. It is in our interest to make a product that will be in demand, and it is in the government’s interest to make sure that people do not suffer from terrible diseases. We hope that such a legal mechanism will be found shortly.

3.     Finally, ordinary people decide which vaccine they should take or which vaccine should their children receive. In such cases, trust should be at its highest. There is not much trust in this regard among Russians since our people do not trust Russian-made medicines. And we are talking about very different people, with different backgrounds and levels of awareness. This, in turn, reflects on the COVID vaccination story, although in my opinion there are other aspects apart from trust in the product’s quality. We need to secure a greater transparency about potential side effects since any drug has potential side effects, and nothing is wrong with that.

On top of that, the regulatory system needs further strengthening and we have to explain to the general public that all businesses that exist in Russia comply with appropriate standards. Because these are the official standards we follow in our production facilities.”