Procruste

Project procrustes is a requirements { policies, procedures, and technology } interoperability database. Its name comes from the mythological inn-keeper. And its moral is 'do you make your own bed and lie in it'?

This metaphor evolves into the extreme fitness tests for products, including safety standards, and insists for example, that leaders, upon declaring a town's water supply to be safe, do themselves take a drink.

A consumer is either on the leading edge or the bleeding edge of change. Small organizations, especially not-for-profits will be champions of alternatives.

does the customer/consumer always have a choice?

Standardization carries a huge benefit: companies meeting extreme standards will be able to leverage their partnerships, to make more effective use of each other's capabilities and to deliver highly robust and compatible products and services.