Infrastructural Innovation: Flexibility, Generativity and the Mobile Internet

2. A Changing ‘World Of Standards’ And The New Needs For Flexibility

The research presented in this paper is part of a growing interest in research on infrastructure standardisation in general and on the tension between standardisation and flexibility within ICT in particular. This increasing interest is a result the transformation of the ‘world of standards’ (Brunsson & Jacobsson 2002). This transformation is a result of the growth in the number and importance of standards due to the so-called convergence of telecommunications and information technologies. This convergence leads to the development of a whole range of new standards, and new kinds of standards, in particular domain specific ones like standards for Electronic Patient Records (see for instance Hanseth et al., 2006).

The necessity of flexibility, as well as the contradiction between standards and flexibility has been a central topic in the literature on standardisation. In this section, we describe how changes in information and telecommunication technologies (ICTs) have brought new requirements for flexibility. From a perspective on flexibility as the seamlessly fit of objects into larger systems as well as the standards adaptability to contextual changes, the very nature of today’s ICTs also require them to be flexible in the sense of enabling and promoting innovation, and in particular innovation by third party contributors. Namely, they must be generative to endure and grow.