Platforms and incentives for consensus building on complex ICT systems: The development of WiFi

• We study the development of technological platforms for complex ICT systems.
• We conducted a case study of the development of IEEE 802.11.
• We identify several hiccups that occurred during its development.
• We describe and discuss strategies to overcome these hiccups.

This paper studies the organizational hiccups that can occur during the development of technological platforms for complex ICT systems and focuses on an important part of the ICT ecosystem; committees that develop common ICT platforms. Given the diverging interests of the parties involved, it is surprising that consensus is usually reached in these committees. A case study of the development of IEEE 802.11 is conducted which is presented as an emergent phenomenon. IEEE 802.11 is a typical example of a highly successful technological platform that encountered several organizational glitches during its development, but eventually achieved widespread market dominance. This study examines these glitches and proposes strategies to overcome them by using concepts from the governance literature.