type="main" <p>We examine factors behind firms' decisions to contribute to open standard setting. Our study highlights a novel explanation: firms seek to improve their positions in an interfirm cooperation network. In the wireless telecommunications standard-setting organization we study, firms...</p>

In this paper we construct an intuitive measure of technological distance. We compare it to previously used measures and show that it satisfies a desirable independence axiom that other commonly used measures fail to satisfy.