Euras Proceedings 2016

The annual EURAS Conferences bring together academics from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds, representatives from national and regional standards bodies, and government agencies, and company representatives. They all share an interest in standardisation reserch and education. The papers presented at EURAS conferences address a broad variety of issues relating to standards and the underlying standardisation process. These include, among many others, standardisation policies, the economics of standardisation, participatory, legal and regulatory issues, as well as the history and the future of standards and standardisation.Particular emphasis of the 2016 conference is on how standards and standardisation relate to the issues of Co-operation and Open Innovation. ´Open innovation´ describes a situation in which a firm collaborates with its customers, suppliers, distributors, institutional partners and even competitors to innovate. ´Co-opetition´ refers to a strategy where firms collaborate with competitors. In both cases, standards frequently play a crucial role. For one, they define inter-firm process, common interfaces and languages. More interestingly, to influence or even control standards in a certain field may well be the sole reason for co-opetition. In standards setting (potential) competitors, allies and third parties share knowledge to contribute to a new standard.