Abstract: With the emerging market countries have playing an increasingly important role in the international trade, economics, politics, science and technology areas, the practices of participating in the global innovation competition by means of standardization have attracted international attentions. The cases of the interplay between standardization and innovation in India and South Africa reveal different innovation modes, different catch-up paths under different type of standards. The practices of India and South Africa provide the theoretical supports and useful references for the emerging market countries, including China, to enhance their capability of innovation and standardization, understanding and participating in the division and governance of the global value chain (GVC). Based on the empirical and comparative analysis of the catch-up cases of the interplay of standardization and innovation between India and South Africa, the minimum quality and safety standard of Indian vaccine industry, the variety reduction standard of South African wine industry, and the compatibility and interface standard of medical information system industry are investigated, respectively, in promote innovation by the mechanism of proving, scaling or coordinating mode.As regards to the paths of catch-up, according to the investigation, the vaccine industry of India, based on recognizing the opportunity to address the shortage of the basic vaccine in developing countries, building up an inducing mechanism and views the international procurement as a kind of demand tool for technology learning and innovation, and then tries to internalize the international procurement standard elaborately into its various national industrial policies through the standardization process. The wine industry of South Africa, however, achieves the scale innovation by reducing variety, together with the scientific planting, modern brewing, and strict wine label management. The medical information system industry of South Africa, nevertheless, realizes the innovation catch-up by creating an attractor, synergistically building up an adaptive and hierarchical structural standard system and overcoming the heterogeneity of the infrastructure by using a critical gateway. It concludes that in the interactive process between standardization and innovation, the government, local companies, scientific research institutions, industry associations and other national actors play their different but synergistic roles. Among them, the roles of the government and the technology/industry support organization, such as the industry associations, are highlighted, as they complement the relatively weak technological capabilities of other actors. The government, on one hand, serves as a coordinator and facilitator of standardization, that include actively pulling out the diverse interests of national stakeholders to shape the direction of technical development and improve the relevance and technical quality of the national standards. The industry association, on the other hand, in the absence of competency of the traditional technology suppliers, as an intermediary between technology supply and demand, by reducing the diffusion gap on the firm and producer’s side, play a substantial role, more likely to increase the technology adoption. What is more important is that the cooperation between the government and industry associations. Finally, it suggests that the strategic focus of innovation, to some extent largely depends on how a company positioning the mechanism of standardization in the interactive innovation.

Key words: emerging market, standardization, innovation, catch-up