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The institutional entrepreneurship implicit in a firm's sponsorship of its technology as a common standard is heset hy several challenges. These challenges arise from a standard's property to enahle and constrain even as potential competitors agree to cooperate on its creation. Our exploration of Sun Microsystems's sponsorship of its Java technology suggests that standards in the making generate seeds of self-destruction. Our study also identifies the social and political skills that a sponsor deploys to address these challenges.