Standardization tips markets toward a designated technical solution. The stakes are therefore high not only for firms seeking to anchor the standard in their own technologies, but also for policymakers: in positive-feedback markets, “winner-takes-most” dynamics shape industrial policy choices. Reflecting this, standardization has moved to the forefront of the race for technological leadership and sovereignty, with major jurisdictions—the United States, China, and the European Union—now actively encouraging greater industry participation.

Classical economics largely casts the state as a fixer of market failures (e.g., externalities, information asymmetries). A more recent literature, however, documents cases where the state acts entrepreneurially—creating markets, de-risking strategic sectors, and providing patient capital, as illustrated by flagship programs such as the Apollo mission. Empirically, much of this work evaluates demand-side instruments—public procurement, R&D grants, tax credits, patent boxes—and their effects on the rate and direction of technical change.

By contrast, the state’s role in standardization remains understudied. Standards form an integrative knowledge ecosystem: they specify technical requirements that compliant products must meet, and the underlying knowledge is distributed across standard-essential patents (SEPs), scientific publications, and the tacit expertise developed in standard-setting working groups and committees. Although standardization processes are typically led by private actors and unfold through lengthy negotiations, public agencies and publicly funded research can still shape the knowledge base that standards draw upon.

Our work advances a holistic view of state–market co-generation of technical knowledge embedded in standards by addressing two complementary pillars: (i) the contribution of public, state-sponsored knowledge to core, standard-relevant contributions; and (ii) the private sector’s incentives and appropriability conditions that sustain R&D investment. Together, these lines of inquiry elucidate how public inputs and private returns jointly shape the evolution of technical standards.