Science and Technology in Standardization: a Statistical Analysis of Merging Knowledge Structures

The objective of this paper is to depict the knowledge array of standards. This is done by identifying and analyzing external effects, specifically spillover effects. The database used is Perinorm. We use a cluster analysis in order to create groups of technology fields for German standards according to the fields of the International Classification of Standards. Methodologically, the distances between these objects or clusters are defined by the chosen distance measure, which in turn is determined by the sum of their cross references. The applied joining clustering method uses these distances between the objects and allows the data to be mapped within a two dimensional space. The results of this mapping show the existence of structures within the standards data fitting to the well-known structure of patent spillovers.