Expert says government tech standards needed to spur competition

“If you’re from Virginia pluggin’ into a power grid at Duke, will your bill reflect that?” Avishai asked. “The critical next standard is telecom reporting protocols for electrical power grids. The standardization of billing and claims processing will be huge.”

The former editor of the Harvard Business Review noted that companies with an early lead in a particular marketplace have little incentive to standardize, since doing so can allow other firms to chip away at their marketshare. But he said companies are quick to adapt to mandates, such as the European Union’s standardization of chargers for cell phones.

“All these steps will require an ecosystem of entrepreneurs to develop middleware. But they won’t jump in without standards,” Avishai said.

Avishai used the example of automobile diagnostic scanners, for which there is a common port used by all manufacturers. The standard for ports was created by the Environmental Protection Agency to enable scans of emissions, but an unplanned result was that small auto-repair shops are able to service a wider range of vehicles using the same equipment.

“EPA wanted to make it possible for small garages to make checks having to do with pollution, but it actually opened up competition in after-warranty repair,” Avishai said. “They didn’t need a different piece of hardware for every car.”