The role of standards in innovation

We review and explore the role of standards in innovation, with particular emphasis on design and manufacturing processes. We begin by defining and cl assifying standards and by exploring their role and infrastructure in socie ty. This is followed by a similar discussion for innovation. By examining t he relationships between innovation and standards, we extract the negative impact and the positive impact each has on the other. A study of four case histories in different domains-manufacturing, computer hardware, mechanical component design, and product data exchange-reveals that, as expected, sta ndards are often derived from innovative technology. Surprisingly, however, innovation is often spurred-directly and indirectly-from standards as well . We conclude that, in general, the benefits of standards on innovation in design and manufacturing outweigh the possible limitations on creativity im posed by such standards. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc.