Every 14 October, World Standards Day (WSD) is a moment to pause and recognize a hidden truth that deeply shapes our daily lives and our future: standards are a pillar for health, safety, quality, and trust – and for a better life for everyone.
World Standards Day 2025
Theme: “A Shared Vision for a Better World – Standards for the SDGs.” It’s an opportunity to celebrate decades of work at national, regional, and international levels, where businesses, governments, engineers, scientists, and civil society meet to solve problems impossible to solve alone.
Standards and sustainability
The way to appreciate the importance of standards for sustainability is to see them as tools for how we design, operate, measure, and improve. When a company commits to reduce emissions, improve worker safety, or secure its digital systems, it should use common references that make those commitments concrete, verifiable, and comparable.
In this context, standards do three things extremely well:
- Enable interoperability so solutions can spread.
- Create confidence by making claims verifiable across borders and supply chains.
- Accelerate cooperation by providing a shared framework and common language.
This combination turns goals into execution and fragmented effort into coherent, powerful action.
The strategic importance of standards
There is a persistent misconception that standards are primarily a cost. In reality, standards – voluntary in both their development and application – are an investment with measurable returns. They reduce transaction costs, allow market access, shorten time to market, and lower the risk of non-conformities and rework. They help organizations make better choices earlier, integrate continuous improvement, and generate credibility with customers, investors, and communities.
Beyond their technical aspect, standards are strategic. They help generate competitive advantages and create value and impact – essential if we want to translate the ambitions of the SDGs into tangible outcomes.
Standards bodies and industry challenges
Today, standards developing organizations (SDOs) must manage complex changes in governance, policies, and business models – and achieve their digital transformation. They face the challenge of doing more, faster, especially in critical fields and new technologies, while maintaining processes that build strong consensus and encourage continued collaboration despite divergent views.
Businesses, meanwhile, must comply with more standards and regulatory requirements across multiple jurisdictions – without slowing innovation. The answer is not to weaken standards or fragment access, but to strengthen collaboration among SDOs and improve how their standards are discovered, understood, and embedded in daily work.
Accuris’ key role
Accuris has embraced this approach as a strategic partner to SDOs (those developing standards) and to industry (those using them). The commitment is clear: Accuris aggregates and stewards access to the widest possible range of standards, supporting each SDO to expand reach and use of its content in ways that protect authenticity and preserve value. The focus is on complementing – not substituting – the role of SDOs by bringing technology capacity and speed to the promotion, discovery, and delivery of standards globally.
Aggregation for real-world progress
Aggregation of content is fundamental to progressing rapidly and efficiently toward the SDGs. If international standards are powerful, regional, national, and sectoral contexts matter as well. Today’s reality for enterprises is that teams need fast, accurate answers and seamless version control and updates across a broad set of documents, especially as standards change rapidly.
When an engineer can quickly discover new standards, see the latest revision, understand normative references, and implement requirements flawlessly – or when business leaders can see which standards support their strategies – then sustainability targets become attainable, not aspirational.
One authoritative entry point
In other words, the value delivered by Accuris is a single, authoritative entry point where users can discover what applies to them, see relationships across families of standards, integrate requirements into existing workflows and plans, and stay up to date.
From ambition to action and results
World Standards Day is more than a celebration; it is a checkpoint. Are we explaining the strategic importance and benefits of standards? Are we making it easier for organizations of all sizes to find and properly use the standards that matter to them? Are we communicating stories that show how public and private partners can scale impact?
Connecting mission-driven standardization with advanced technology and user-centric design translates consensus into capability – and capability into improved, measurable economic and environmental performance and social responsibility. This is what Accuris is enabling: sustainability not as a separate program, but as something embedded in how strategies are developed and executed, products are designed, supply chains are managed, risks are controlled, and opportunities captured.
Download the Official SDG-Standards Mapping: Get the free ISO/UNDP guide on contributing to the Global Goals.
Explore Our Partnerships: See how Accuris supports the global standards industry.
About Nicolas Fleury
Nicolas Fleury is widely considered one of the world’s most respected experts and influencers in international standardization, with a career spanning over 35 years of international leadership experience.
His authority is rooted in his extensive history with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the world’s largest developer and publisher of International Standards. His key roles at ISO included serving as the Secretary-General (Acting) in 2017, and leading nearly every function of the ISO Central Secretariat in Geneva, including standards development, sales, information technology, communication, legal, human resources, and finance. He has also been an active contributor to the development and transformation of ISO and served on various ISO governing bodies, such as the ISO Council and the President’s Committee.
In addition to his past leadership at ISO, Mr. Fleury is a co-founder and managing partner at Stractic Advisors and the owner of Nicolas Fleury Leadership International, where he advises businesses, governments, and organizations on leveraging the strategic value of standards, strategy development, governance, and geopolitics and international relations. He also has a venture, ReData Ltd, focused on revolutionizing the standards industry through AI-driven insights and data analytics.
He is a recognized lecturer at various university programs, sharing his knowledge on standardization, geopolitics, and leadership, and holds an Honorary Professor title from the University of Qingdao in China, and is a Fellow of SES, the Society for Standards Professionals. Accuris has also leveraged his expertise by having him lead the in-person “Foundations for Standards Leadership” training course.