Technical innovations, standardization and regional comparison -- a case study in mobile communications

摘要

This paper studies the relationship between technical innovations and standardization, eliciting implica- tions for an optimal role for standardization in the innovation processes, taking mobile communications as an example. An important role of standardization is to synchronize disjointed technical innovations into a systemic innovation, which creates a new market. A two-tiered approach to alleviate negative effects of standardization on technical innovations is discussed, to specify only the interface specifications between sub-systems and to define successive generations of standards. Finally, a regional comparison is made among Europe, Japan and USA on the standardization processes of mobile systems and their ensuing results.