The Standards Innovation Paradox - by Li Jin

Standards enable emerging technology to spread, but eventually come at a cost of stifled innovation

Hi readers, The following is a guest post by my friend, Michael Mignano, the co-founder of Anchor, the leading podcasting platform which was acquired by Spotify in 2019. He has spent many years working with RSS, a standard for publishing updates to web-based content that is used by most podcasting apps and many other media types. He argues that technical standards can help new technologies get momentum and reach critical mass, but over the long run can hinder innovation as more stakeholders adopt the standard. That’s in contrast to proprietary, closed systems where developers are free to…

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