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Standards Game

Intentionally shaping a market standard so others must follow your approach, limiting their ability to differentiate.

"Driving a market to a standard to create a cost of transition for others or remove the ability of others to differentiate."

-- Simon Wardley

🚦 Standards Game Strategy Assessment Tool

Quickly assess how ready you are to apply the Standards Game strategy. Explore signals in your map and organisation that suggest a good fit, and check your readiness to execute effectively.

🤔 Explanation​

What is the Standards Game?​

The Standards Game is the deliberate effort to establish your technology, process, or specification as the de facto or de jure benchmark for an industry. By steering a market toward your standard, you create high switching costs and reduce competitors’ freedom to innovate outside your framework. This can be done openly—through collaborative bodies and open approaches—or covertly by leveraging market dominance until your way becomes unavoidable.

Why use the Standards Game?​

  • Lock in customers by making alternatives costly or incompatible.
  • Limit competitor differentiation as rivals must conform to your chosen approach.
  • Guide ecosystem evolution in a direction that benefits your broader strategy.
  • Simplify integration and reduce friction for partners, often leading to network effects.

How to use the Standards Game​

  1. Offer a reference implementation or open specification to encourage adoption.
  2. Build alliances and industry consortia to legitimise the standard.
  3. Use lobbying or regulatory engagement to enshrine the standard in policy when possible.
  4. Maintain and evolve the standard so others depend on your guidance and updates.
  5. Provide tooling, certification, or compatibility programs to keep participants aligned.

🗺️ Real-World Examples​

USB and universal compatibility​

Intel and partners promoted the USB interface as an open standard, displacing a range of proprietary connectors. Once adoption reached critical mass, hardware makers had little choice but to follow.

GSM mobile standard​

European regulators and telecom companies cooperated on the GSM standard, enabling roaming and interoperability across networks. This coordination gave European manufacturers an early global edge and forced others to comply or be left behind.

Amazon S3 API compatibility​

Amazon’s S3 object storage interface has become a de facto standard. Competing clouds often implement S3-compatible APIs so existing tools and applications continue to work, effectively locking users into the S3 model.

🚦 When to Use / When to Avoid​

🚦 Standards Game Strategy Self-Assessment Tool

Find out the strategic fit and organisational readiness by marking each statement as Yes/Maybe/No based on your context. Strategy Assessment Guide.

Landscape and Climate

How well does the strategy fit your context?

  • The market suffers from fragmentation or competing formats.
  • We control a technology that others depend on or want access to.
  • Adoption of a common approach would create network effects.
  • Competitors are divided among incompatible alternatives.

Organisational Readiness (Doctrine)

How capable is your organisation to execute the strategy?

  • We can provide and maintain a reference implementation.
  • We have influence with regulators or standards bodies.
  • Our brand or market share is strong enough to drive adoption.
  • We are committed to supporting the standard long term.

Assessment and Recommendation

Strategic Fit: Weak. Ability to Execute: Weak.

RECOMMENDATION
Consider alternative strategies or address significant gaps before proceeding.

LowHighStrategic FitHighLowAbility to Execute

Use when​

  • A unified standard would dramatically reduce friction for customers or partners.
  • You have enough market weight or alliances to make your approach stick.

Avoid when​

  • Standardising would erode your unique value proposition.
  • The market is still exploring radically different solutions and premature standardisation would stifle innovation.

🎯 Leadership​

Core challenge​

Balancing openness to drive adoption with enough control to keep the standard aligned with your strategic interests.

Key leadership skills required​

  • Coalition building and negotiation
  • Regulatory awareness and lobbying
  • Technical governance and ecosystem management
  • Clear communication and marketing
  • Long-term commitment to maintenance

Ethical considerations​

Leaders must ensure the standard genuinely serves user and industry needs rather than merely entrenching their own power. Transparency in governance helps avoid accusations of lock-in or anticompetitive behaviour.

📋 How to Execute​

  1. Map the landscape and identify fragmentation or emerging consensus.
  2. Publish or open-source a reference implementation or specification.
  3. Recruit partners and form or join a standards consortium.
  4. Provide tooling, certification, or compliance tests to ease adoption.
  5. Lobby regulators or influential bodies to recognise or mandate the standard.
  6. Continually evolve the standard to address new needs while maintaining backward compatibility.

📈 Measuring Success​

  • Market share of products or services conforming to your standard
  • Number of partners or third parties certified or adopting the standard
  • Frequency of regulatory or industry references to your standard
  • Reduction in customer churn due to switching costs
  • Influence over roadmap and direction of the wider ecosystem

⚠️ Common Pitfalls and Warning Signs​

Lack of adoption​

If early uptake is weak, the standard may never reach critical mass and could be abandoned.

Perceived vendor lock-in​

Heavy-handed control can generate backlash and rival standards, undermining adoption.

Underestimating maintenance costs​

Standards require ongoing stewardship; neglecting updates or compatibility erodes trust.

Regulatory backlash​

Attempts to force a standard can attract antitrust scrutiny or political opposition.

🧠 Strategic Insights​

Standards as chokepoints​

When you define the interface everyone uses, you control the pace of change and become difficult to displace. Others innovate on top of your foundation, not against it.

Timing matters​

Standardise too early and you may freeze an immature approach. Too late and a rival standard may already dominate. Mapping where the component sits on the evolution curve helps judge the right moment.

Prepare for counterplay​

Competitors may attempt embrace-and-extend tactics or create alternative alliances. Monitoring and engaging with these efforts is essential to keep your standard central.

❓ Key Questions to Ask​

  • Influence: Which organisations or regulators must we convince to legitimise our standard?
  • Adoption: What incentives can we offer developers or partners to adopt it?
  • Differentiation: Does controlling this standard truly strengthen our position, or could it commoditise us?
  • Long-term commitment: Are we ready to maintain governance and backward compatibility for years?
  • Counterplay: How might competitors respond, and do we have a plan for their alternative standards?

🔀 Related Strategies​

  • Open Approaches – Opening code or processes can accelerate adoption and make your approach the default.

  • Defensive Regulation – Embedding a standard in law cements your advantage.

  • Lobbying – Persuading policymakers or industry bodies to endorse your approach.

  • Raising Barriers to Entry – Standards can raise compliance costs for newcomers.

  • Designed to Fail – Poisoning rival standards can clear the field for your own.

  • Cooperation - working with stakeholders to build consensus and reduce friction in standard adoption.

  • Industrial Policy - leveraging government actions and incentives to mandate or encourage standard adoption.

  • Exploiting Network Effects - harnessing network effects to accelerate adoption and entrench the standard.

  • Market Enablement - preparing ecosystems and pilot programmes to drive early uptake and validate the standard.

  • Limitation of Competition - using compliance requirements to restrict alternative solutions and raise entry barriers.

  • Embrace and Extend - adopting standard specifications before layering proprietary extensions to steer its evolution.

  • Alliances - forming coalitions of organisations to coordinate and promote standardisation efforts.

  • Playing Both Sides - engaging multiple standard bodies or camps in parallel to influence outcomes and retain flexibility.

  • Buyer-Supplier Power - leveraging control of standard implementation to influence supplier terms and buyer commitments.

⛅ Relevant Climatic Patterns​

📚 Further Reading & References​

Author

Dave Hulbert
Dave Hulbert
Builder and maintainer of Wardley Leadership Strategies