How Standardization Fuels Innovation Across Industries
October 2020
T
he concept of opinionated software refers to software that has a specific and guiding approach to problem-solving, which is achieved through standardization. This standardization has several significant benefits, including the promotion of frictionless collaboration and the enforcement of best practices.
1. Standards are a shared language
A successful example of standards accelerating coordination can be found in the construction industry. One of my favourite things to do is bike around Toronto to look at construction sites. The exposed, incomplete buildings reveal their inner beauty, complexity, and order. I can see hundreds of contractors buzzing around following the same building code, engineering standards, and using BIM standards for asset collabouration.
A.I. is propelled by collabouration:
"Open standards such as MLPerf and Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX) are key to driving innovation and collaboration in machine learning across the industry." — Bill Jia, VP, AI Infrastructure at Facebook
2. Standards make skills transferable
In the publishing industry, some conventions are centuries old, such as the organization of books into front matter, body text, and back matter. When I know exactly where to find the index (in the front matter) or where to find the sources (in the back matter). This keeps me from having to relearn the structure and organization of things.
In biomedical research, leaders in the field have lamented:
"Much can be gained simply by better organization of the current state of the art." — Erik Meijering et al., Nature Biotechnology, 2016
3. Standards leverage past knowledge
Without standards, software developers and maintainers get bogged down in debate. What's the best solution? What do people really want? It's mentally tiring. These difficult questions are best answered by experts in the problem domain and then codified into standardized software frameworks.
Advice for software maintainers:
"Adhering to a small set of predefined governance rules and practices means that open-source communities can attract and keep supporters by minimizing the overhead that building an open-source community entails." — Robert Fish, President, IEEE Standards Association
The implementation of standards helps to leverage past knowledge, enhance the quality of software, and reduce decision fatigue. Software frameworks such as React, Docker, or Robot Operating System (ROS) are great examples of standardization as they are designed to solve specific problems in a unique way. Frameworks guide and accelerate users as they build. In essence, standardization acts as a catalyst for the healthy growth and development of applications built on a framework. ■