In this article, we develop a theoretical understanding of patenting and standardization strategies and analyze their practical implementation for in‐ and outbound knowledge transfer in new product development processes. Our case study consists of two original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and one supplier active in the global automotive industry. We consult extensive external and company documents as well as interviews with 13 company experts. Although our theoretical considerations suggest that standardization, patenting and their interrelation can be of considerable importance for knowledge transfer in new product development and innovation processes, this is hardly implemented in practice. The resources devoted to patenting by far outweigh those for the standardization process. Neither of the OEMs have their standardization strategy linked to their new product development processes; only patenting strategies are considered in the new product development processes. The surveyed supplier, however, uses standardization strategically. We further consider how a standardization strategy should relate to the patenting strategy in terms of generating the most beneficial outcome for knowledge transfer. We recommend an integrated standardization strategy that is analogously to the patenting strategy and tied to the new product development process.

This paper analyzes the standardization landscape that is now taking shape to support market uptake of the electric vehicle ecosystem. For comparative qualitative analysis, data was taken from the three relevant expert assessments recently conducted by DIN, NPE and ANSI EVSP. Each of these three compendiums views a different set of standards as the basis needed for achieving market proliferation. In total, these studies referenced 1423 standards. Contrary to our expectations, only 18% of those standards were cited by all three compendiums. This surprisingly small set of standards includes documents from the international standardization entities, ISO and IEC, but also from the US entities, SAE and UL. The EV ecosystem is founded on standards for road-vehicle engineering. Nevertheless, standards from the fields of electrical engineering, telecommunications and information technology play an equally important role in ensuring the feasibility and interoperability of the subsystems upon which the overall ecosystem is built. Consequently, the question of which standards will be most important for ensuring market uptake remains open. On the basis of these findings, we recommend a conceptual framework that clarifies stakeholders' opportunities for decreasing risk by leveraging implementation of central and peripheral standards selected to match the company's innovation policies and competitive strategies. This decision is governed by balancing the trade-offs between product performance and standards compliance.

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This paper uses the example of the Electric Vehicle (EV) ecosystem to examine the options that the automotive industry has for participating in standardization. Standardization is part of the genesis of a technology and contributes to the development and propagation of that technology. The perspective of an incumbent of the automotive industry is taken in order to explore and map the basic participation strategies. Standard supporter strategies are illustrated, by way of example, based on the presentation of case studies for the core charging-interface standards. Because standardization participation is determined by industry-specific motives, namely to support a standard via targeted active participation, we incorporate a forum-shopping approach based on the standardization landscape into our considerations. The global multi-level playing field is characterized by diversity, the participation and reciprocal involvement of consortia, competing standard development organizations, boundary spanners as well as political-level involvement for the support of standardization and establishment of innovations. It becomes apparent that it can be necessary for a standards supporter to ensure a high level of diversification in its standardization activities.

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