CEN MERGES STANDARDS AND INNOVATIONThe European standardization organization CEN encourages more standards to (1)____________the culture of innovation. A strategic innovation working group has been set up under the leadership of the Finnish member of the Technical Board of CEN, Mr Antti Karppinen. The task of the working group is to (2)______________means of merging standards and innovation. Traditionally, standards have been used as (3)_________________, processes or systems in a consensus process involving all interested parties. Therefore standards are normally retrospective documents with a wide support from users. However, standards do not necessarily plot the course for a future development - this is done in R&D departments, at universities and other research institutions. The CEN innovation working group will try to (4)______________as a tool to disseminate research results. In this way standards could play a new role by bridging traditional producers and innovative research environments. Furthermore, the working group will encourage the CEN technical committees which develop standards to (5)_________more closely with the CEN/STAR which deals with issues linking research to standardization. Finally, the working group will support the European policy initiatives on innovation. Mr Antti Karppinen expresses great expectations regarding the outcome of the effort. “ I think it is an extremely relevant and important working group and I am really (6)______________using standards in a new and more progressive way. ” “I hope the initiative will encourage innovative companies to (7)__________and see standardization as a strategic possibility of increasing competitiveness. In future CEN will produce high quality standards including the newest/latest innovations. This is the challenge to the entire standardization system”, Mr Karppinen concludes.
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