Achievement

OPTIMIZING PROTOCOLS AND STANDARDS PoET deepened its retrospective studies on standard setting in past emerging technologies and developed current applications, with acceptance of two papers for publication and revision of drafts for a symposium volume. Our findings are unconventional. 1. Common wisdom holds that official standard-setting organizations such as ISO and NIST are critical. In practice, private firms and voluntary standard-setting bodies are often been decisive. 2. Common wisdom holds that ideally, standards should be set early, defined completely, and be universally accepted. In practice, uncertainty over effects of standards and technology development affect the optimal timing of standard setting, degree of completeness of definitions, and extent of acceptance. An important cross-disciplinary outcome of this work is its applicability to the organization technical standard setting within NSF SynBERC and NSF FIND.