Learning Outcomes
Objective: Students who complete this curriculum will gain a good understanding of standardization and its economic impact at the corporate level as well as at the macro level of the national, European and global innovation landscape. They will also understand the role of standards and their relationship to sustainability and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Description: This series of introductory lectures will focus specifically on standardization and will also address the overall quality infrastructure system in general, as well as discuss the relationship and role of standards within various aspects of sustainability. The holistic perspective of this course includes insights from the field of innovation economics as well as applied standards and sustainability research. Lectures will include examples from various industries such as ICT, cybersecurity, hydrogen, bioeconomy, and circular economy. In addition, the course discusses the role of standards in global value chains.
Context: from an economic and business perspective, standardization can act as a catalyst for innovation by facilitating the transfer of knowledge and the diffusion of technologies to the market. In this respect, standards, or more generally, quality infrastructure, are elements of the technical infrastructure of our society. They facilitate the exchange of goods, services and information. Standards provide users with a common terminology or recognized aspects of measurement and testing*.
Standards act as a platform for new innovations and for the formation of an infrastructure. Standards play a special role in the context of global value chains, as they reduce information asymmetries and serve as a means of global communication between international trading partners. One example of the successful application of standards is mobile communications, where Europe has particularly benefited from the timely release of GSM and where international cooperation has most recently produced the fifth generation of standards (5G). Another example is laser technology, where German industry has achieved a leading position in Europe and internationally through early standardization. The introduction of a common charging plug for electric cars is another example that should facilitate the development of a nationwide charging station infrastructure. One example from the bioeconomy that was also discussed in the course is the EN13342 standard on biodegradability/compatibility.
* Some of these standards are familiar to us, such as standardized paper formats, standards on the World Wide Web, plugs and sockets of electronic devices, screws, matching nuts, etc. Other standards we may not be aware of, such as the standards for the step height of a staircase or the standards for the safety of playground equipment.
