The dominance of technical standards has a profound impact on the pattern and institutional arrangement of global governance. Sino-hydro internationalization is one of the most important informal mechanisms to practicing Chinese concept of global governance. China′s hydroelectric project takes the leading position in the world both in technology and market but is still subject to European and American engineering technical standards, which influence Chinese major role in global governance system. Current situation urgently requests to explore the feasible mode and effective path of Chinese hydroelectric engineering technical standards internationalization. Meanwhile, international mainstream engineering technical standards have undergone a successful transformation from domestic norms to international standards. Among them, British Standards Institution plays a pivotal role in the process of internationalization of British hydroelectric engineering technical standards. Due to this fact, based on the theory of innovation ecosystem, role theory and technical standard diffusion theory, this study tends to investigate the evolution of British standards by identifying the roles and strategic actions of system members, analyzing the competitive advantage of the system. Based on the longitudinal development history of British Standards Institution, this exploratory single-case study would make an in-depth description and theoretical explanation of British Standards Institution, untangle the mode of hydroelectric engineering technical standard internationalization.It comes to the following findings: first, with the change in dynamic environment, different organizations play diverse roles and then perform strategic actions in three stages. The essence of role transformation is that members of innovation system cope with environment change, system evolution and members′ behaviors, following with the change of strategic actions, generating characteristic modes. Second, three characteristic modes include technology standardization, technical standards internationalization and technical standard business internationalization, forming three advantages involving standard leading, network effect and positive feedback of standard. Third, on account of comparison between China and Britain, this study puts forward suggestions from three levels containing collaborative innovation-led technology standardization, technical standards internationalization based on industrial alliances and ecosystem competition centered on hydroelectric engineering technical standards. To be specific, British hydroelectric engineering technical standard embedded in the innovation ecosystem establish high switching cost, resulting in technical standards competition turning to competition in technical standards innovation ecosystem. The possibility of new technical standards replacing current standards depends on innovation ecosystem whether can provide the same or more full-featured environmental conditions and service functions. Hence, the new innovation ecosystem should not only integrate the current ecosystem but also achieve better performance on this basis.This paper makes main contributions as follows: first, it tends to bridge the gap in the role theory with the attempt to observe the dynamic evolution of organizational roles; second, it constructs a technical standard innovation ecosystem based on national and international competitive advantage at macro-level, analyzes members′ relationship at meso-level, discusses how a core member drive the evolution of system members at micro-level. Further, the view of supporting role of government and association in innovation ecosystem proposed in this paper can enrich the existing research about ecosystem; third, it deepens the comprehension of reason that European and American enterprises have been rarely involved in hydropower construction but their technical standards can still occupy a dominant position in the world, emphasize that technical standards is a key competitive advantage for hydroelectric engineering enterprises and even the country.