Standards Development, Research & Innovation

What are the benefits?

At a national policy level, Innovation 2020, Enterprise 2025 and IMPACT 2030 emphasise the importance of standards to the RDI community in supporting an innovative Irish ecosystem. Standards facilitate the introduction of innovative products by providing interoperability between the new and existing products, services and processes. Furthermore, standards bridge the skills gap and aid in knowledge transfer. This is recognised at a European level through the emphasis placed on standardisation as a vital part of EU RD&I funding mechanisms.

Standards help build consumers trust and confidence in new technologies, thereby enabling the accelerated mass-market diffusion and adoption of related products and services. In effect, standards help bridge the innovation gap between research and global markets by enabling efficient and effective knowledge and technology transfer, resulting in maximum socio-economic and environmental benefits and impact. The earlier a company or RDI centre engages in the standards development process – integrated within their overall innovation process, the sooner they can bring their standards-informed innovation to competitive global markets, resulting in greater rewards.

During the standards development process, new technical insights are gained as well as time-to-market advantage. Irish companies can add their own unique product or service innovations on top of the foundational standards. Hence, standardization leaders and fast-followers are fully prepared to successfully launch their standards-aligned products and services across international markets to meet the needs of consumers and society.

The New European Standardisation Strategy recognises the need for enhanced engagement in standards development by the RDI community, and to test the relevance of their results for standardisation. Through EU initiatives such as the recently launched "Standardisation Booster’, there are significant opportunities for the Irish RDI community and associated Startups and SMEs, to aid in the co-creation process of standardization, supporting open innovation and cross-industry research development and industry activities.

The Commission has recognised the importance of standards through the publication of a Recommendation on a Code of practice on Standardisation, this code of practice proposes a set of recommendations on how to best identify opportunities and techniques to increase the uptake of R&I results through standardisation. Furthermore it supports and lays the foundations of the guiding principles for knowledge valorisation.

For further information on the standardisation process please watch the HS Booster Presentation below, for  training material developed for the HS booster EU project, which facilitates and streamlines the dialogue between Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe Research & Innovation projects with the Standardisation landscape and its main actors, namely corresponding Standards Developing Organisations (SDOs) to increase the European impact on (international) Standardisation and strengthen the European competitiveness.

Contact NSAI Standards Business Development, Research & Innovation

Barry Cox | Email: Barry Cox | LinkedIn