Innovation and Standards

It could be perceived that innovation and standards are opposing ideas; in reality, the two ideas work together to prevent the extremes of stagnation and chaos: standards bring order to chaotic implementations of new ideas, additionally providing a baseline for new innovation to flourish. That innovation, in turn, feeds the creation of new and updated standards. 

One of the first computer scientists, Herbert Simon, in The Architecture of Complexity coined the heuristic that “complex systems will evolve much more rapidly if there are stable intermediate forms than if there are not.” Standards are those stable intermediate forms necessary for innovation and evolution.

For example, in 2014 the OGC - a standards developing organization (SDO) - adopted an ‘Innovation Statement’ for maintain current standards while simultaneously addressing the evolution in technology and markets. While ensuring harmonization in OGC standards, OGC must simultaneously respond to the Christensen’s Innovators Dilemma. The OGC identified several actions to implement its Innovation Statement:

• Extend or adapt the present baseline of OGC standards;

• Recognize that new standards may overlap with or diverge from existing standards, along with guidance to evaluate among options;

• Develop harmonization techniques (brokers, facades) for interoperability.

To frame a discussion about innovation and standards, consider this view of open standards development as developed by Mark Reichardt, OGC President:

1. Based on competition in the marketplace, over time a specification emerges as a de facto standard in the market. The specification may be publicly available but it is owned and controlled by an entity as a ‘proprietary standard’ (e.g. Microsoft’s Word .doc).

2. As the market develops, the owner of a proprietary standard may see value in ‘opening up’ their specification by assigning the intellectual property to an SDO. For example, when OGC licensed KML for use by OGC .

3. As an alternative to development by a single organization, a group of organizations may collectively identify the need for a standard and develop a specification in anticipation of its widespread use. The OGC WMS as developed in the OGC Innovation Program is an example of an ‘anticipatory standard’

Several excerpts from The Innovators by Walter Isaacson provide a historical perspective on technology innovation on which SDOs can build:

1. The digital age may seem revolutionary, but it was based on expanding ideas handed down from previous generations.

2. Innovation comes from teams more often than from lightbulb moments of lone geniuses.

3. Most of the successful innovators and entrepreneurs had one thing in common: they were product people. They cared about, and deeply understood, the engineering and design.

If you have a question or comment on this blog, contact George Percivall, former OGC CTO and Chief Engineer. percivall at ieee.org

Co-authors of this blog post include: Luis Bermudez, Scott Simmons and Terry Idol.

Originally posted  as an OGC Blog on 10 March 2017 at https://www.ogc.org/blog/2559