Technological standards are a cornerstone of the modern information economy. These standards affect firm strategy, market performance and, by extension, economic growth. While there is general agreement that swift movement to superior technological standards is a worthwhile goal, there is much less agreement on how an economy can attain those goals in specific instances. Sometimes there are even debates about whether appropriate standards arose in past episodes – for example, academics still dispute whether Betamax was a technically superior video cassette recorder (VCR) to VHS. Answers are not transparent because a variety of market and nonmarket processes determines the evolution of standards. By default, decentralized market mechanisms, private firms, and standards development organizations shape the development and diffusion of standards.

In addition, when government actors step in to sponsor a new standard or move the market between standards, as they occasionally do, debates about the interaction of competing market and technical factors are not merely academic, nor are the answers transparent. Government actors can make choices about competing specifications for a standard and often have the power to mandate compliance with the standard. Moreover, rarely are these decisions reversed, and when they are, the events are noted for their rarity. For example, the Federal Communication Commission's decision to alter its prior choice over the color television standard a few years later prevented the country from employing technology that all experts regarded as obsolete.