Promotion & obstacles in testing standards innovations

Standard setting has effects not only on encouraging innovation but also retarding from it. It is known that product standards urge to popularize the product and promote innovation while they cause market lock-in to this product. Moreover, choosing technology by product standardization would create innovation by promoting product development for next generation. However, the effect of testing standard on innovation has not been discussed so far. Testing standards is just known for its effect of activating the competition in its testing method and encouraging products differentiation. This research demonstrates by showing LCD case the fact that though testing standards encourage research and development in specific fields, they would cause some effects below. 1. Differentiation competition would continue into over spec area when testing standards encourage differentiation. 2. Testing standards would deprive incentive for technology development and stop the technology development when testing standards is old and not correspondence to technology development level. 3. Testing standards would not be used when its appeal to consumer is poor though it could be evaluated correctly.