AOM Sponsor Divisions: Technology and Innovation Management (TIM), Strategic Management (STR), Entrepreneurship (ENT)

AI is a fundamental component of firms' digital transformation, yet its diffusion confronts a critical challenge: standardization. Widespread AI adoption requires robust governance frameworks addressing trustworthiness—encompassing accountability, compliance, and security—while facilitating interfirm data exchangeability. Standardization serves as an essential mechanism for establishing such trustworthiness and fostering ecosystems across firms, platforms, and users. Recent scholarship shows that AI standards function beyond mere technical specifications, operating as governance instruments that shape regulatory regimes and organizational practices.

This PDW advances a novel research stream by bridging AI and standardization studies. It examines how AI standardization shapes ecosystems with requisite market and social acceptance, and addresses how technology firms of varying scales can navigate standardization for business and ecosystem development—exploring tensions between heterogeneous institutional logics of innovation, management, and regulation, while considering the roles of international bodies and firm-level strategies.

Through expert presentations, interactive discussions, and case-based exercises, this interdisciplinary forum convenes scholars and practitioners to co-create insights into emerging frameworks and research opportunities. Participants will acquire actionable approaches for integrating standardization into AI-related research and practice, fostering innovation and competitive resilience in an increasingly standardized AI landscape.

Keywords: AI, Standardization, Governance, Ecosystems, Scalability, Interoperability

Friday, July 31 2026 - Loews Philadelphia Hotel - Commonwealth D

|| Introduction and Overview
08:00AM - 08:05AM ET (GMT-4/UTC-4) 
Maria Cristina LONGO, University of Catania; Masanori YASUMOTO, Yokohama National University

|| Panel 1 – Building the AI Ecosystem Foundations
08:00AM - 09:00AM ET (GMT-4/UTC-4) 
Driving AI Scaling Through Standardization and Ecosystem Development

Panel Presenters:  Aija LEIPONEN, Cornell University; Ram RANGANATHAN, University of Texas at Austin; Jiamin ZHANG, Peking University 
Discussant: Dong-hyu KIM, University of Glasgow
Moderator: Giovanni Battista DAGNINO, University of Rome LUMSA

|| Panel 2 – Extending the AI Ecosystem
09:00AM - 09:55AM ET (GMT-4/UTC-4) 
AI Interoperability and Industrial IoT: From Integration to Market Uptake

Panel Presenters:  Scott CADZOW,  ETSI-European Telecommunications Standards Institute ; Hideyuki IWATA, TTC-Telecommunication Technology Committee and ASTAP-Asia-Pacific Telecommuniy Standardization Program; Richard TONG, IEEE-Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Artificial Intelligence Standards Committee.
Discussant: Howard BENN, Telecommunications Consultant and Bristol University
Moderators: Maria Cristina LONGO, University of Catania; Arturo CAPASSO, University of Sannio and Luiss G. Carli University

|| Breakout Table Discussions
10:10AM - 10:55AM ET (GMT-4/UTC-4) 
Facilitator: Arturo CAPASSO, University of Sannio and Luiss G. Carli University

|| Wrap-Up and Concluding Remarks
10:55AM - 11:00AM ET (GMT-4/UTC-4) 
Giovanni Battista DAGNINO, University of Rome LUMSA