Henk de Vries key note speaker at founding of Korean Society for Standards and Standardization

On 12 October, 2010, the Korean Society for Standards and Standardization (SSS) was founded. This academic society intends to promote standardisation research in South-Korea and its neighbouring countries.

To celebrate its foundation, the Korean Agency for Technology and Standards (KATS) and the Korean Standards Association (KSA) organised an international symposium on standardisation research.

<link people henk-de-vries _self>Henk de Vries, Associate Professor of Standardisation was invited as key note speaker. In three speeches, he addressed the results of research on:

• involving SMEs in standardisation (findings of this project are being implemented in 31 European countries);  
• a new approach for analysing standards battles (PhD research by Simon den Uijl using the case of the standards battle between the high definition optical disc standards Blu-ray and HD-DVD); 
• the role of a standardisation research network.

De Vries could base the latter on his experience as coordinator of the Dutch standardisation research network and as Vice-President of the European Academy for Standardisation EURAS. The only other national networks can be found in Bulgaria and Greece.

So far, Europe is the centre of standardisation research; Germany and The Netherlands are the leading countries. The Korean development illustrates the increasing importance of Asia in this field of research. The chair on standardisation has close cooperation with colleagues in several Asian countries, focusing on China, Japan and Korea.