National standards strategy: public/private cooperation for global competitiveness

Purpose - Establishing timely national product design standards is an important cooperative activity capable of capturing economic benefits from having the national product design standard adopted for global commerce. The purpose of this paper is to undertake an exploratory analysis of five global economic powers' - Canada, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the USA - national standards strategy (NSS), comparing them for commonality in institutional standards setting policy approaches, i.e. there should be a general "convergence" in specific NSS policy initiatives among similar, economically developed countries. Design/methodology/approach - The five national standards strategies are evaluated for distinctive policy initiatives, with common policy initiatives combined, resulting in 18 distinctive policy initiatives found among the surveyed population. Each national standard strategy is then compared to the 18 policy initiatives, with commonality recorded. Findings - Contrary to any preconception that economies considered comparable in economic development would tend to converge around similar NSS policy initiatives, the evidence reveals there is less harmonization (the results show convergence is overwhelmingly in the moderate/low categories - 14 policy initiatives, or 77.8 percent), with initial evidence indicating that the degree of public or private institutional involvement in technology standards setting may affect the types of policy initiatives included in a NSS. Research limitations/implications - The paper is exploratory in nature, with only five nation-states in the survey. Practical implications - The paper provides insight into: the strength of a country's NSS versus a competitor nation; and public and private sector development of the national innovation system. Originality/value - The paper offers an exploratory evaluation of harmonization of NSS across countries and its significance to the national innovation system and global competitiveness.