At a time where people feel the pace of innovation is too fast yet the rate of progress too slow, ruptures are appearing across the social fabric.
According to the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer, repairing that fabric is a job most of us want to see performed by civil society. Even those who harbour a high sense of grievance see NGOs, as the institution most likely to be a unifying force that brings people together.
At a recent Media Trust Roundtable there was broad agreement, too. Voices from tech, media, and the non-profit world came together to collaborate, share insights and define strategy to support the voices of charities and under-represented communities in a misinformation age.
The event left me with a question: If civil society is so critical to repairing the social fabric, what impact would it have in helping innovation spread more effectively across society?
When Innovation Moves Faster Than Trust Can Follow
Stephen M.R. Covey wrote that “when trust goes up, speed goes up and cost goes down.” That principle still holds. But while Covey showed us that trust accelerates everything, in a fractured world, speed alone isn't the win.
Because when innovation moves faster than people’s ability to make sense of it, it stops feeling like progress and instead, starts feeling like dislocation.
What’s really broken isn’t the pace of innovation, it’s the relationship between innovation and public belief. Trust is out of sync. The solution isn’t to slow down innovation or even speed it up. It’s to broaden the trust base that determines who feels carried by it.
Narrative Fluency: The Missing Trust Mechanism
At the roundtable, a recurring theme emerged: disinformation isn’t just about facts, it’s about belief. Because belief doesn’t form through repetition of messages or facts, it forms when something resonates. When it feels true, not just sounds true.
As one participant put it: “People don’t need more facts. They need a story that helps them make sense of the world they’re already living in.”
This is where narrative fluency enters. Not as a communications tactic, but as a condition for trust in high-friction environments. It’s the ability to:
- Sense what people are ready to hear
- Choose the right voice, not just the right message
- Align tone, timing, and emotional credibility
- Communicate across fracture without hardening it
Without narrative fluency, innovation speeds ahead. But trust falls behind.
Civil Society as the Trust Synchroniser
If innovation feels too fast, it’s likely because no one trusted has translated what it’s for.
Civil society plays a unique, and increasingly irreplaceable role here.
It operates close enough to communities to feel the emotional temperature, but independent enough from political and commercial cycles to maintain steadiness and moral clarity.
It doesn’t just distribute truth but delivers it in ways people can believe. Neither do civil society orgs just represent communities. They show up emotionally, relationally, and locally.
And as noted earlier, NGOs are seen as the institution best positioned to repair the social fabric by even the most aggrieved in society.
The Real Opportunity: Synchronising Innovation with Trust
Innovation at the speed of trust is about synchronising ambition with belief, change with consent, movement with meaning. It’s the difference between being carried by momentum and being left behind by velocity.
This is the recalibration we need. Not slower or faster but stronger and more relational.
To bring innovation and public trust back into sync, we must:
- Respect emotional credibility as a strategic advantage
- Build in proximity, not just scale
- Treat trust not as reputation, but as infrastructure
Alongside this is an investment in narrative fluency as a core capability, and one that can be built in partnership with civil society.
After all, civil society knows how to re-establish the rhythm that can lift progress, innovation and trust. What it needs now is to be resourced, trusted, and brought to the table early as both an amplifier and architect.
Because when people feel heard, represented, and protected, speed can become progress again.
Sat Dayal is Managing Director of Technology at Edelman UK.