Analysis of Industry Standards Protocol

Introduction

Industry Standards refers to products that are being produced by the mainstream economy. Open Source Ecology takes industry standards as the starting point converting these norms to ones that are based on Open Source Ecology. Once these industry standards are understood, they can be modified to fit the needs of open source, appropriate technology.

The best starting point for building any device or machine is to study what has been done already: history, prior art (patents), and industry standards.

It is an assumption of OSE that here are no inventions, but only small incremental developments on a large, existing pool of knowledge. These are known as innovations.

In order to create an innovative design, it is critical to have a deep understanding of the designs and mechanisms that are in common use - such as in products that are available on the open market. The critical enabler of open innovation is access to documentation of what has already been done.

A study of Industry Standards includes:

1. History - what has been done already? What is the first ever working example of the artifact? How has this evolved in time and geography?
2. Prior Art - patents may be used as an official record of innovations' descriptions
3. Study of Industry Standards - What kind of features and performances are common in commercially-available, mainstream products? These may not necessarily be desirable, but it is important to understand why they exist.

1. Comprehensive listing of mechanisms or designs that are in common use today, as well as listing of lesser known designs
2. Explanation of the key features of each design
3. Analysis of performance to cost ratio for each machine or component. This should be expressed as cost per unit of performance, such as: cost per kW of power generated, cost per throughput of production, etc.

The analysis of history and industry standards is a good starting point for a Modules Breakdown Diagram, and for extracting working mechanisms for a Tech Tree of Choices.

Protocol

1. Use Study of Industry Standards Template - make a copy of it for your use.
2. Research the machine or module on the internet.
3. Publish on the wiki and link in your Work Log.