Innovation and Legislation: Standardization in ... - The Bolin Group

• Strengthening the System.
This paper, the conference, and The Standards Edge: Dynamic Tension represent an opportunity to
learn about the views and plans of leaders that will impact your organization, your nation, and your
world. Most importantly, they are there to facilitate connections. And connections, after all, are what
standardization is all about.
Standardization and Innovation
People often perceive standards as innovation killers. As Ben Wu, Department of Commerce, stated
in the previous conference, “Standards are a MEGO issue—My Eyes Glaze Over.” How then could
something labeled as MEGO actually spur innovation? Perhaps it is because most don’t realize that
“ICT standards are a process, not a thing. Standardization and innovation are a collection of activities
that have phase relationships with each other that effectively amount to an ecology,” according to
Rob Gingell, Vice President and Chief Engineer at Sun
“If you can do all this, you will
Microsystems. This ecology must be kept in balance to
empower innovation by the freedom be effective and spur innovation. If standardization
that comes from constraints.”
occurs too far ahead of the need, time will be spent
focusing on the wrong processes and knowledge, which
—Rob Gingell, Chief Engineer,
can actually scare away the innovators. If
Sun Microsystems
standardization occurs too late, the market will become
fragmented with competing innovations. There is an optimum range of chaos in front of the
standard where innovation begins to occur and the life cycle for the technology evolves to meet
marketplace needs. To maintain a healthy balance that fosters innovation, existing practices must be
standardized, the effectiveness of standards must be measured by how they are consumed, and
standards must offer enough flexibility so that companies who are already performing the practice to
be codified can continue to do so. While it is important to strive for consensus, caution should be
taken to ensure that the level of compromise is not so strong that an installed base for the standard
does not exist. Finally, enforcement of the standard must be achieved by measuring whether
conformance is established in a way that is useful to people. “If you can do all this, you will empower
innovation by the freedom that comes from constraints,” declared Gingell. People are much more
innovative with some framework than if they are given a blank sheet of paper and told to go create.
Innovation and Legislation: Standardization in Conflict
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