The Underestimated Power of Technical Standards

For a long time, technical standards were part of the background noise in business and society. Their importance to innovation and growth has been underestimated. With the spread of the ISO 9000 family of standards, it became clear that there can be different opinions on their definition and implementation. Standards are not a priori “normal,” they require the so-called normalization discourses that are linked to the power of definition. This connection has finally become clear with the transformation to a service and knowledge economy. The structure of its value creation is based on subjectivity and interaction, while standards aim at objectification. At present, digitalization is rapidly changing not only value creation but also social life. Those who set standards at an early stage have globally irreversible positions of power. As a result, the standardization process is finally coming out of the shadows and becoming the subject of geopolitical discourse. All this will be discussed primarily on the basis of experiences, observations, and research in Germany.