Over the past twenty-five years, scholars have contributed to a growing body of literature that examines standards in their various forms (e.g., codes of conduct, guidelines, checklists, regulations, metrological samples) and in numerous fields (e.g., electricity, food safety, healthcare, industry, information technology). Studies point to the multiplicity of standards and the competition that occurs between them. We argue that multiplicity also occurs within a single standard: this aspect, although under-considered, can enrich our understanding of the varieties of standards and the variety of ways in which they are used. In this paper, we propose the framework of a life cycle, arguing that standards have a life of their own and that they evolve (and thus are multiple) over time. Standardization can therefore be defined as a process of controlling and framing this diversity, rather than one of only reducing it. We present four cases from diverse fields (product standards, risk analysis, nanotechnology and organic agriculture) that illustrate this argument and discuss how the dynamic framework contributes to analysis.