With many nations looking to boost their economic growth through increased productivity and innovation, researchers from all over the world are exploring how standards can play a role.
In an ISOfocus article entitled How standards meet global economies, SCC’s CEO John Walter shares SCC’s latest research findings on the economic value of standards and the benefits they bring to national economies. Mr. Walter explains that the use of standards have been shown to be associated with an increase of nearly $3 billion in Canada’s real gross domestic product by keeping our society running efficiently and safely, reducing costs to consumers and providing access to global products.
In the article, Mr. Walter was joined by his ISO member counterparts, Olivier Peyrat, General Director of France’s national standards body (AFNOR), and Scott Steedman, Director of Standards at the British Standards Institute (BSI). AFNOR and BSI also recently studied the link between the use of standards and economic growth, labour productivity and the ability to export.
BSI research found that using standards led to an average of 3.2 per cent of additional exports per year from the U.K., worth a total of £6.1 billion (GBP). Likewise, research from ANFOR found that companies that are members of standardization committees experienced 20 per cent extra growth per year.
Studies like those done by SCC, AFNOR and BSI are important because although the economic benefits of standards are not always obvious, Mr. Walter explained, “Investing in their development, implementation and conformity assessment pays dividends for those who do.”
Access the article to learn more about these studies on the economic impact of standards in Canada, France and the U.K.