Technology Standards Development: A Framework

Distributed Innovation and inter-company collaborative development have become prevalent modes of operation for some technology-intensive firms which rely on them to reduce their investment outlays while concomitantly preserving their technology leadership positions within their respective industries. Technology standards development has become a key enabler for achieving these seemingly bipolar objectives. The de facto model that exemplifies this trend can be summed up as: ‘collaborate, standardize, compete!’ Under the rubric of a proposed technology standards development paradigm derived from extant practice, we examine the case of the Universal Serial Bus (USB) technology. By probing the reasons and the processes for the creation of technology standards such as USB, we explore the underlying methods by which firms collaboratively pool intellectual assets while maintaining their competitive edge. Our model identifies and describes the environmental forces that influence technology standards development and sheds lights on governance issues that emanate from such activities. Experiential observations point to opportunities and challenges that call for the deft management of standards-related investments and activities by pace-setting technology firms. Several shortcomings have surfaced from this study, such as the need for metrics to measure the degree to which technology standards contribute to business objectives, the development of efficient methods to engender collaboration across large multinational corporations, the impact of standards on new product development and the effects of globalization on standards development in emerging economies.