Bob Sutor: “Standards can allow innovation by providing a strong underlying foundation on which to build the new ideas. Do standards themselves need to be innovative? No, but they can lead to innovation downstream. Can waiting too long to create open standards hinder innovation? Absolutely, if de facto standards force or convince people not to try to innovate in certain areas. So please don’t simply say ‘standards might hinder innovation.’ That’s overly simplistic and doesn’t take into account how things evolve over time.”