Standards and Innovation: Why Users Matter in a Global System. A conversation with Dr. Laurie E. Locascio, ANSI President

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Laurie E. Locascio, President and CEO of the American National Standards Institute, about how standards enable innovation and global collaboration.

We explore the critical role of standards users, the importance of measurement science, and how the standards system is evolving in the age of emerging technologies.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hello and welcome to the voice of standard users, a podcast brought to you by IFAM. I'm Kai Morin, your host, and in each episode, I speak with leaders towards shaping industries around the globe to the use of standard of standards and practice. I'm happy to introduce today's guest Dr. Lori Locatio, President and CEO of ANSI, the American National Standards Institute. Before joining ANSI in January 2025, she served as the Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Dr. Locatio is a biomedical engineer by training and a fellow of the National Academy of Engineering. Dr. Locatio brings decades of experience at the intersection of science, measurement, and standards leadership. Before we dive in, here are three fun facts about our guests. The first fact is that Dr. Locasio is a researcher, inventor, and entrepreneur at heart. She loves loves thinking of new ways to make the world better and keeps a running list of invention ideas in a phone. A new type of memory store for memory storage to injectable body parts and to a new dating app. What a bunch of great ideas. The other fan fact is she has three grown sons, including a middle son who is a master brewer, making him, as she puts it, her only fellow bioengineer. She stays centered through a combination of yoga, hiking, and excellent wine, though not at all at the same time, of course. So welcome to our podcast, Laurie.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here today.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

So I would like to start this podcast by asking you you have had, I would say, a remarkable career bridging size, measurement, and standard leadership. How did your experience as a researcher shape the way you view standards today?

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Yeah, I appreciate that question. So in your introduction, you mentioned that I'm a scientist, a researcher, an inventor, an entrepreneur. And really along the way, in every one of those areas, one of the things that people always ask you is how do you know your technology is better? Right? How do you know it's better than the last one? How do you know it works? How do you know it's reliable? And so, you know, in in thinking about that over the years, it really all comes down to standards. You have to have a way to benchmark what you're doing to actually prove to the world that you did something better than existed before, and to prove to a potential customer that, um, or an investor that it's really worth bringing this to market and it's really worth um purchasing it and and uh and including my invention in your life. So I think that's where standards fit in. It's it's interesting because I I think early on I didn't think about the word standards. I just knew I had to prove that my technology was good and better than what was out there currently. Um, you know, something else about standards that I found really interesting as I got more involved in um in the standards developing process, one of the things that I realized is my technical expertise is really critical, clearly, at the standards table, right? So, and every experience that I had in research really led me there because I could sit at the table with peers who were I admired so much and who brought additional other technical expertise. But there are other things that I found that I really needed there. I needed to be able to explain to everybody in a way that they could understand why what I'm presenting is as good or maybe better than an idea that they bring to the table. I had to learn to listen, I had to learn to negotiate, I had to learn that process of consensus, which ultimately is to make things better and better in a standard. So um, so those are kind of the soft skills I learned once I got into the standards development process. But maybe those are lessons in life, you know, listen and um and engage because other people's ideas always make yours better.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Right. So standards to sum it up are really a mission critical element of any business, any industry.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Mate. Moving on, standardization activities in the United States are organized differently than other parts of the world, with several US standards bodies very active. What is the role of ANSI in this context?

SPEAKER_01 5:28

Yeah, so so in the United States we are very different. Um, some say uh strange and complicated. Uh, others say, well, I say it's interesting and agile. And that agility is really needed because our approach is is largely decentralized and it's largely market-driven and really led by the private sector. Um, and so we have all kinds of ways to develop standards or to go about creating standards. First of all, of course, we participate in ISO and IEC, and ANSI is the entry point for that in the United States, but we have hundreds of standards developing organizations that are accredited by ANSI in the United States. Some of those really just have a have a national interest, but others have an international interest and expand out globally. Um, and then we also have a more fluid type of approach in the United States, which is consortia like 3GPP and the Linux Foundation. Um, and so over all of that, ANSI's role is really to coordinate this complicated system, coordinate it and and really strengthen it, add to the strength of the United States system. So we do really four different things. I just mentioned most of them. We accredit SDOs and their processes of openness and transparency and balance and consensus. Um we are a neutral convener. So when new technology comes about, um, and now AI isn't new anymore, but what when technologies like that come about, we bring our stakeholders together. We bring our our industry, we bring our government, we bring our academics together, and we talk about the technology and where the standards needs are at this particular point in time. And then we also represent the United States globally as a member of ISO and IEC. So those are kind of the ways that we we um we approach it. Uh and so, you know, it it is weird and complicated, but at the same time, um, ANSI is here to try to help bring some sense to it and and help us all go in the same direction.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Great, great. So after you stepped into the role of CEO of ANSI, what priorities did you see as the most urgent in that particular context?

SPEAKER_01 8:06

You know, uh, so I I came into ANSI in January last year. So I've been here just about a year and a couple of months. And the first priority that I saw is really centered around geopolitics. Um, there's a lot of churn in the system right now in the global economy. We all know that. We're all experiencing it. And ANSI, it was my goal to make sure that ANSI participates in this incredible, wonderful standards-developing uh ecosystem around the United States to make sure that we're protecting the system that propels markets forward and keeps the world from fragmenting, right? So we want to be a part of that. We wanted to make sure everybody knows that the United States and our companies really want to be part, stay engaged, be part of it, be active, because it is it um the it is uh standards processes and the standards that really underpin all of the markets in the in the world that help keep them or drive them towards stability. And we just wanted to make sure that we were there and a part of that. Um the other priority, I I would point out a couple more. The other is um in critical and emerging technologies like AI and quantum, right? We see these technologies moving very, very fast. The world sees them moving very fast. Of course. And the issue is can standards really keep pace with what is happening in the digital economy and and what is happening beyond the digital economy? Um, so that's that's another priority of ours. Um, a third priority is really around people. So we in the United States see a lot of people in the standards ecosystem starting to retire and and move move on in their lives with other things. And yet we aren't keeping pace with that and attracting new people into the system.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

A younger one, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

And so that people is really the third part of uh or the third tier of our priorities. And so um ANSI just released the United States Standard Strategy in January this year. And that United States Standard Strategy is really around capturing these points. It's capturing our intention for strong participation, um, it's capturing our intention for deeper international collaboration, and it's also capturing our intention for faster responsiveness in areas that need a faster response, and and making sure that we have the people that can continue to participate so that that the ecosystem stays strong.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

Great, thank you. iPhone represents the global voice of standard users, and in the survey we published last year, uh safety, uh, health, and market access were uh we confirmed them the importance. At the same time, they mentioned the challenges that are facing working with the content in standards. How can standards bodies in general and ANSI in particular help them?

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Well, first of all, let me just compliment IFAN on an incredible survey. Um, I think there were over 900 participants in that survey. That was outstanding. So clearly, people wanted to have a voice, right? And you just reached out to them and they they responded um enthusiastically. And I thought that was fantastic. As soon as I I saw that posted, I I spread it around ANSI and and around the entire uh US ecosystem. Yeah, really, really great work. So my compliments. Um and you, you know, you did the first thing that was needed, which is listening, right?

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Yeah, and people were people wanted the voice, wanted you to hear them, and and we heard them. I I know that all of the national standards bodies heard them through through your survey. So um, and so what's now what what do we do now? Uh you mentioned that how can we help them? So how we can help them is to make sure that you know they they talked about the problems they're facing with standards, with the content and standards. And one way that we can help them is meet the needs of the market for content, make sure that we're we're participating in, proposing the right kinds of um content for our market, but also um how the content is delivered, because we've not met the needs of the market in terms of how the content is delivered, right? We haven't been, we've we've been we've been delivering the content by providing them with PDFs, and the entire you know system has been doing that for decades. We have to meet their demands by looking at how we deliver it in a way that they can incorporate it easily in a digital format into the systems where they work, into their work environment. And so we are thinking about that at ANSI, we're thinking about that with our SDOs in the United States, and of course, we're working on that with ISO and IEC as well to make sure that digital content um can be delivered well and in the right format to all of our members.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

Right. Which brings me to the next question, talking about digital transformational standards bodies. In IFAN survey, users mentioned the distance with standards bodies. How can this distance be reduced? How can standard users and standard bodies better collaborate to develop products and services that meet with users' needs?

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Yeah, it's interesting because the worst thing that you can do is develop a technology without asking the user if that was the right thing, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Exactly. Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

And a lot of people do that and it it just doesn't work.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Not effective, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

You haven't you haven't met any needs, and you're developing something that in a vacuum. And so um what we have to do is bring them early, earlier and earlier into the process as we're thinking about the digital standards world. Um, and so we do this, um we're doing this at ANSI by participating in different fora where um where our members are, talking to them about what their needs are in digital standards. And we're bringing that voice back to um our SDOs in the United States as well as to ISO and IEC in the SMART standards process. Um but but in ISO and IEC, they've also developed a sort of an official forum. It's the Content User Advisory Group, where they bring in industry to tell them what they need and different types of industry from all over the world, from various sectors, who can actually tell ISO and IEC what their requirements are going to be once they set out SMART standards. And so um, so that that gives users a voice in the official process in in the international and those two international fora. Uh, and then in the United States, we try to complement that by by having our own engagements with industry in the United States and find out if their needs are the same, different, make sure we capture it in every place where we are. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

Okay, great. So what advice would you give companies that rely heavily on standards but rarely participate in the technical committees to develop standards?

SPEAKER_01 16:36

I my advice would be that, and this is a message I try to give in every every place that I go, is that standards aren't just technical, they're strategic. Um you either join the process now, right? Early on, and and by joining the process and having a voice at the table, you help set the rules for that technology as it moves forward. You can do that, right? It's an open process and your company should participate because that is a strategic position for your company.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

Yeah, if you don't, then somebody else is developing the rules that are going to govern all of your um technology later. And then you're just reacting to it, right? Once the standard is developed, then you can react to the standard and comply. And yeah, it's it's too late for a couple of reasons. One very important reason is reacting is very expensive, right? Because you're not ready and that standard comes out, and all of a sudden you have to figure out how to catch up. Yeah, you have to catch up. Um, being proactive, however, is a lot less expensive for the company. Even though there's an initial uh cost because you have to participate, you have to be there, it's a lot less expensive ultimately, because then your company has helped shape the standard or your entity, your organization has helped shape the standard. And then ultimately to comply with the standard is a lot simpler if you'd like to adopt it and be a you know um to move your market forward. So uh, and and then I guess another thing that I would say is that um if you are going to participate, you don't have to participate everywhere, right? You have to participate where it's most important for your future success, whatever organization you are, um, participate where it's most important for your success. And in the United States, those stakeholders could be um government stakeholders, they could be industrial stakeholders, they could be academic stakeholders, but whatever standard, wherever you need that to drive your future success, that's where you should be. That's the table you should sit at.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Right. So SE operates within a very globally interconnected standard system. How important is international collaboration today in areas such as digital technologies, for example, AI, quantum computing, and biotech, or sustainability?

SPEAKER_01 19:19

Yeah, I so I'll just say, you know, the question is how important is it, right, today? And I would say it's essential. This I would say the stakes have never been higher. Um, the technologies that we're talking about, like AI and quantum movement, they don't respect national borders, right? They're they're global, they're being developed globally, they're being implemented globally, the digital economy doesn't sit in a single geography region or country. Um if we don't figure this out, if we don't collaborate, um what's gonna happen is we'll end up with a completely fragmented incompatible standards regime in various parts of the world. Uh, you know, for a lot of reasons that's a problem, but ultimately what that ends up in is higher cost, it ends up in duplicate testing, it ends up in slower innovation overall globally, um, slower technology diffusion out to the market. I I guess I would summarize it by saying that if we it's it's more important than ever because there's so much lost opportunity for everyone if we if we don't collaborate internationally.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Right. So collaboration is critical, especially in those accelerated times when technology moves so fast.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

That's a very good point. I didn't even talk about the time scale, but you're right. These technologies are developing so quickly. Um, and and um so that really forces us to come together and make sure that we can do the best for the world as the technology is accelerating.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Right. So, practically speaking, how can standard system keep pace with such a vast innovation cycles? What can be done practically?

SPEAKER_01 21:29

So, you know, I would say we talk a lot about structural changes that are needed. We need faster processes, we need an expanded toolkit, we need um, you know, if you think about traditional consensus standards, people have become a little bit critical of the fact that it can take years. Um, but because that's because the processes are so rigorous, they require consensus. Um, but for faster movements. Improving technologies, as you just discussed, you know, people want faster results. And so we have to look at ways to give them what they need in the timeline that they need them. So that's a those are kind of some structural changes we need. But there's a second dimension, and that's the cultural change. Because culturally, we just need broader participation. We need participation from academia, non-traditional sectors. We need participation from other parts of the world. We need participation from startups. Because if we're really going to reach the world, we need to make sure we have the broadest participation possible. And so, you know, I would I would say to sort of sum this up, I would say the goal isn't to sacrifice quality for speed. It's to build agility into the system so that we can stay relevant and still deliver that rigor that we need to make standards valuable.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

Very challenging. So we are near the end of this exciting podcast. Could you deliver one message to the global community of standard users? What would it be?

SPEAKER_01 23:24

Um my one message would be that um 93% of global trade is built on the backs of standards. Wow. That's an amazing statistic. And while the world is experiencing a lot of churn, uh it's so important that we are there participating, providing those relationships, providing that underpinning for trade that is necessary to keep the global markets or to help keep the global markets stable, more stable than they could be. So yeah, I think it's this interconnectedness of the world that you see is it I know that there have been several reports that have been written about the importance of standards recently, and some have called it sort of the silent underpinning. It is, it's it's quiet, but it's so important. If you think about 93% of global trade depends on standards, then that very quiet underpinning is so important to protect.

SPEAKER_00 24:49

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, thank you very much for your deep knowledge of the standards ecosystem and that you share with us today so openly. So I would like to wish you much success in achieving all your objectives and things. And thank you listeners for tuning in to the voice of standard users. I hope this podcast has benefited you because as you said, standards make the world go around. 95% is critical. So, see you in our next episode. Bye bye.