Lets say that your Product Marketing manager stopped by for a quick chat, and as she is leaving she drops a bomb: “Lets implement CIP4’s JDF in the next product release.” Thankfully, you have enough self-control and can resist the urge to let numerous four-letter-words fly out of your mouth… Instead you nod your head and respond, “That’s an interesting idea. Let’s make time to talk about it more.”

Throughout my career, I had opportunities to interact with standards at varying degrees: leading the definition, and implementation or usage in my products. Though each one was fun, challenging and unique on its own way, my JDF experience definitely makes to my top 3. You see, JDF is an immense 850-page (about 3” thick) standard that covers anything and everything that relates to digital printing and the graphics art industry. So, when it gets dropped on your lap, you do take it seriously for various reasons, one of which is to keep your engineers from fainting (or quitting) on the spot.

Standards seem to trigger a love-hate relationship between marketing and engineering. This is mainly true for standards that are defined and sanctioned by a standards organization body vs. de facto industry standards. This tension can be better understood by looking at the benefits and challenges of implementing standards.

Benefits of standards:

• Standards enable interoperability among diverse and often competing products and services. Even though fax machines existed in the mid-to-late 19th century, it wasn’t until implementation of related standards (as well as reduction of cost of technology components) that they became popular in the 1970s.
• Interoperability helps encourage and build an ecosystem of complementary products and services. In many ways, it can also lead to the success of an industry. The examples span from AC outlets in your home, to the Bluetooth headset for your phone, to the USB connection on your printer.
• Customers value open standards. From their perspective, proprietary standards (or lack of standards) lock them into a product, service and/or a vendor combination. Their entire investment could be at risk if a product is discontinued, or as their needs change they may not be able to grow with the same vendor.
• Standards allow firms to focus their resources on what really counts and what differentiates them from the rest of the pack.
• Standards can drive commodization, which enable off-the-shelf availability of these technologies, tools and services. By leveraging this, you can reduce your time to market, improve overall quality and reduce your costs, such as in the case of first IBM-PC.
• Firms’ strategic direction and competitive differentiation can be built on standards, such as in the case of QualComm. Standards can help you drive your partnership approach to building an ecosystem of complementary products to enrich your technology and products.

Challenges of standards:

• Standards organizations are often comprised of competing firms, and as such the result can be viewed as just good enough, where it is built on the lowest common denominator of ideas and approaches.
• As it is a standard, it is difficult for a vendor to differentiate just on the standard alone. After all, standards are meant to level the playing field. The implementation may be limited by the standard, and lack the ability to incorporate innovations or to improve in any one performance vector. If a firm decides to add these performance vectors, such as using custom extensions, often they will break the standard, as in the case of Microsoft with Internet Explorer.
• Standards and the certification required to get your logo can be expensive. Often there are proprietary technologies that can accomplish the same task without this extra cost. It can be less costly to go with a generic RF transmission system than to be certified to the Bluetooth standard.
• The fact that a standard exist doesn’t mean it is useful or correct. Not all standards organizations take interoperability and the validation process very seriously. This does contribute to a reduction in the overall usefulness of the standard, and reduces the chances of follow on versions.
• Too often a standard is nothing more than a line item on a product data sheet. As a result, it consumes precious resources from the engineering department while not adding to the overall product competitiveness or functionality.

I personally appreciate standards as they contribute to solution ecosystem that can enrich my customers’ businesses. Here are some ways that I have learned to improve the overall standards implementation experience for the businesses that I worked in.

• Take time to educate your organization. Make sure every functional group understands what the standard means, how it enhances your product and service, what are the benefits that can be derived from the standard (benefit) as well as what it would take to implement it (cost). Too often the cost of implementation is underestimated while the benefit is over-exaggerated. So, use the education process to set appropriate expectations and align the organization.
• Analyze how the standard can be best incorporated into your product line. While the interoperability and automation may be your core competency, specific technology implementation may not be. Leverage existing resources and partners to improve time to market and overall quality of your implementation.
• Recognize that a given standard has a specific version, interoperability conformance specification and potentially other related implementation rules and guidelines. One of my pet-peeves is developing to a standard that is half implemented. Imagine putting on your product sheet “Supports standard abc version xyz, except for the following sub-sections: …..” If parts of the spec doesn’t make sense or are not useful, take it up with the standards body and improve it.
• In many cases, a given standard can open up opportunities for the overall business that didn’t exist before. In those cases where it can become a strategic differentiation for your business, such as building partnerships and alliances to enrich your overall product offering, push your organization to take advantage of it. You can also utilize these partnerships to validate the interoperability of your implementation. Talk about killing two birds with one stone.
• Decide what your overall position will be in regards to this standard activity. Is it yet another line item, potential participation in the committee, active involvement in the definition of the standard or an opportunity to lead the standard’s definition. This decision can be especially important where you have a competing proprietary solution: do you compete against the standard with your proprietary technology, do you maintain both technologies in your product line, or do you incorporate your proprietary functionality into the standard and discontinue yours at some point in the future.

In summary, though standards can be an irritation for your organization, they also can represent a strategic opportunity for your technology, your products and your firm. As a technology manager you get paid the big bucks to determine how best to take advantage of standards and incorporate them into your technology and product roadmaps. Enjoy the ride.

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