National Institute of Standards and Technology
Albert N. Link, Jamie R. Link · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2009
This chapter describes the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) through which government acts as entrepreneur. NIST leverages public-sector and private-sector R＆D through the direct provision of infrastructural and research resources that reduce the technical and market risk of developing infrastructure technologies — infratechnologies — that become the technical basis for standards, voluntary standards in particular. This is necessary because infratechnologies and hence standards are quasi-public goods and they result in underinvestment by the private sector. The innovative policy action of using public resources toward voluntary industrial standards — the technology infrastructure — lessens barriers to innovation by reducing both technical risk and market risk.