The Entrepreneur and Standards

Ken Krechmer, Fellow,International Center for Standards Research, University of Colorado, and Elaine J. Baskin, Ph.D.

12/10/2007
(Original Publish Date: 12/14/2006)

For society to gain the most advantage from entrepreneurship, the entrepreneur's desire to control their products and markets must be balanced with the socially desirable impact of standards to distribute technology and market control. Groups of technologies sustain new waves of human civilization. In each wave of civilization the balance between the desires of entrepreneurs and the needs of society has been achieved differently. The information age is built on the technologies that create information systems. The expanding standardization of these technologies is a hallmark of the information age. However, proprietary control of information technology standards by entrepreneurs is changing the balance between private gain and public good. Post-information age standards offer the entrepreneur new ways to achieve commercial advantage yet support public standards.