• Organizations report that accelerating market reliance on such as no or limited access to the standard, the confidentiality of standards is eight times more likely to happen with open discussions and feedback, or other barriers to participation, gener- standards than with standards that have implementation ally conflict with open source software development models. fees. We hope you are able to use this report to familiarize yourself These findings tell us that companies are leveraging open stan- with how open standards are perceived by many organizations dards to build more innovative products and increase their ability and to better understand the opportunities and benefits that to compete in the marketplace. A common, open, and RF collab- may arise through engagement with standardization projects. We oration approach to fostering innovation is a well-known pattern encourage you to further explore the study data and share your in the information and communication technology industry that findings with us. is expanding into other industries. We have also seen an increase in open standards where more restrictive standards develop- Research overview ment processes have failed to scale with the collaboration needed to add value, such as in the motion picture, energy, automotive, We conducted a worldwide online survey to collect insights about telecommunications, and manufacturing industries. Not coin- organizational involvement in standards, the values and benefits cidentally, these shifts toward open standards often mirror the of standards, the trends of standardization, and the barriers to adoption of open source within an industry. As new technologies developing and adopting standards. The survey was fielded in enable new digital processes, we often see open source software January 2023, and we received 496 valid responses, which are forming a bedrock of software stacks that companies build their the basis for the analysis presented in this report. The survey innovation around. In those situations, there is a strong comple- included questions in the following areas: Demographics, organi- mentary alignment between open source software and open zational involvement in standards, the value of standards, growth standards. Conversely, standards toward the closed (or restrictive) of standards, and the development of open standards. For more end of the spectrum tend to struggle in the context of open source information about this research approach and participants' demo- software. IP licensing models that frustrate the development of graphics, see the Methodology section of this report. an open source implementation coupled with other restrictions, THE 2023 STATE OF OPEN STANDARDS EMPIRICAL RESEARCH ON THE TRANSITION TO OPEN STANDARDS 8