Standardization in a Digital and Global World: State-of-the-Art and Future Perspectives

Standardization is now becoming central to the innovation
strategy of companies and governments because of the advance
of both digitalization and the globalization of innovation. Big
data-driven digitalization is where the firms create and capture
value using the seemingly infinite data from a current generation
of four billion mobile device users engaged in digital interactions
and transactions .
This digital vortex has already engulfed the industries, such
as travel, music, retail, banking, and media, but now more traditional industries are also impacted, including energy, health care,
agriculture, etc.. By 2020, digitalization will have disrupted
more than 80% of the industries at least in developed countries
. Meanwhile, the increased globalization of business in the
last decades has had a disruptive effect on industries. There has
been a multiplication of players and the apparition of successful
competitors from various parts of the planet, and the demise of
some traditional companies from the western world.
In the rest of this introductory article, we discuss how
the standards emerge from an interaction between three main
sources, the standards standard-setting organizations (SSOs),
the competitive market forces, and the government. We present a
framework that highlights how these sources differ
and work together to shape the standardization in a digital and
global context. Also, using this framework, we introduce the
contribution of each article of this issue and their contribution to
some of the major issues that the standardization is facing today
in a digital and global world. We conclude with the suggestions
of avenues for future research on this topic