Sep 9, 2026 · 28 min · 11 segments
Trust is difficult to capture in a conventional KPI, but it still leaves evidence. In this episode, we spoke with Sebastian Husein, Impact Development Manager at the University of Twente, about how…
Sebastian HuseinGuest
Sarah JaberHost
So maybe just to get started and build on the topic of today's Fireside Chat and your connection to it, I'm very curious to hear a bit more around what led you to look more closely into this topic, the role of trust And what impact have you seen through your work on the role that trust plays on if partnerships stall or progress over time?
I think a lot of this started jostling around in my head when I came across some work from a professor named Bent Flyberg.
So he's the author of a book that's been making the rounds the last couple of years called How to Get Big Things Done.
Something like one in 200 projects are over budget, over time, and don't deliver the originally promised benefits.
And he goes into a whole interesting data analysis and assessments of why that is and where things practically fail.
And those had nothing to do with strategy or how good the content is or things like that.
It came down to people and their personalities, the natural optimism biases that we have to be over optimistic in our planning.
And then also when you're in competition, you tend to over inflate things and things like that.
So that kind of sparked me to think about when I think about projects and partnerships and university innovation, it's not always the technology that's the blocker.
It's there are things about human relationships that can be the big boost or the big barrier.
And it very quickly became thinking about relationships and trust is a huge part of that.
And I have seen quite a bit of success then in applying that sort of framework and thinking when approaching new types of partnerships.
And I think you already mentioned a really important point, which is people can, in a way, make or break a partnership, right? Because we're talking about human interaction and When we talk about partnerships, at least at UIN, we sometimes talk about a stairway model or partnership development stairways.
How do you go from that early contact to really testing out the collaboration, deepening the relationship and maybe eventually moving towards a longer term or more strategic collaboration? And I know in your work, you talk about a trust hierarchy or a trust staircase.
Can you explain what that means and how does it help teams understand, you know, where does the relationship sit or how does it potentially progress?
And this was something that I was asking myself a lot when trying to navigate, what do I mean by trust? And how do you build a trust? So when realizing how important this concept is, it quickly becomes...
So maybe just to get started and build on the topic of today's Fireside Chat and your connection to it, I'm very curious to hear a bit more around what led you to look more closely into this topic, the role of trust And what impact have you seen through your work on the role that trust plays on if partnerships stall or progress over time?
I think a lot of this started jostling around in my head when I came across some work from a professor named Bent Flyberg.
So he's the author of a book that's been making the rounds the last couple of years called How to Get Big Things Done.
Something like one in 200 projects are over budget, over time, and don't deliver the originally promised benefits.
And he goes into a whole interesting data analysis and assessments of why that is and where things practically fail.
And those had nothing to do with strategy or how good the content is or things like that.
It came down to people and their personalities, the natural optimism biases that we have to be over optimistic in our planning.
And then also when you're in competition, you tend to over inflate things and things like that.
So that kind of sparked me to think about when I think about projects and partnerships and university innovation, it's not always the technology that's the blocker.
It's there are things about human relationships that can be the big boost or the big barrier.
And it very quickly became thinking about relationships and trust is a huge part of that.
And I have seen quite a bit of success then in applying that sort of framework and thinking when approaching new types of partnerships.
And I think you already mentioned a really important point, which is people can, in a way, make or break a partnership, right? Because we're talking about human interaction and When we talk about partnerships, at least at UIN, we sometimes talk about a stairway model or partnership development stairways.
How do you go from that early contact to really testing out the collaboration, deepening the relationship and maybe eventually moving towards a longer term or more strategic collaboration? And I know in your work, you talk about a trust hierarchy or a trust staircase.
Can you explain what that means and how does it help teams understand, you know, where does the relationship sit or how does it potentially progress?
And this was something that I was asking myself a lot when trying to navigate, what do I mean by trust? And how do you build a trust? So when realizing how important this concept is, it quickly becomes...
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