Concept-Oriented Research and Development in Information Technology

13

Glocalization: Market Cultivation and the Future of Standards

Richard Mark Soley

Object Management Group, Inc., Needham, Massachusetts, USA

Abstract

Standardization is the greatest force for innovation in the world. This fact is little known and less believed; in fact, when standards efforts begin, there is often a warning that the new standard will stifle innovation, and that new ideas now abed in England will rue the day that a standard was created, as it were. In fact, there are several balances, several tightropes, which standards processes must walk to provide value to nascent and established industries, including the following:

• The need to provide continuity and consistency, versus the need for progress and new solutions to old problems
• The need to allow, and in fact encourage, competition to provide best practices for industries, versus the need to allow new ideas to grow and flourish
• The need to move quickly, to seize opportunities while they exist, versus the need for careful planning and well-designed solutions to difficult problems
• The need to support markets with real, implementable, implemented standards that can be deployed quickly in end-user situations, versus the need to ensure that each player in a new or existing marketplace has the opportunity to compete fairly and openly

Too often, standardization processes and groups fall prey to the desire to replace the many competing solutions to a problem with a single, perfect solution; after all, that is the focus ...