Standardization and Innovation: Standards Development Principles

There is a general perception that standardization and standards are in contradiction to innovation. It is however now being realized that standardization has an important role in fostering innovation by enabling faster dissemination of new technologies and acceptance of innovations in market. This has become a critical consideration in a fast-evolving global environment driven primarily by various emerging technologies. Standardization bodies are increasingly reaching out to the scientific and research communities and to other sources that are known to drive technological changes and innovations in order to build deeper relationships aimed at better understanding of standardization needs and fostering linkages between standards and innovations. Simultaneously, standardization bodies are aggressively working on the use of technologies to innovate on processes in order to be effective and remain relevant in fast-changing business environments. There are, however, few challenges that may have to be encountered in this regard, particularly in ensuring complete adherence to the guiding principles of standardization. After a brief section on how the standardization world functions and the guiding principles of standardization, interplay of standards and innovation and how standardization facilitates dissemination of technologies and encourages research is examined in this chapter. The future trends in standardization and how innovation today is a strategic consideration to standardization bodies are presented next. Finally, the interlinkages of standardization, innovation, and guiding principles of standards development and the likely challenges to be faced in this context and few directions on how standardization bodies need to approach the subject are presented.