Taxonomies are essential for businesses as they provide the classification of information that algorithms need to drive automated decisions and the basis for making the decisions explainable and repeatable. Consequently, taxonomists need to ensure that taxonomy has a reasoned basis and justification to be durable. A way to make business taxonomies durable is to borrow approaches used for building scientific taxonomies.
The taxonomy of birds is one of the most rigorous taxonomies. Revisions or changes are often debated and litigated sometimes for decades before they are accepted. The process involves a progression of lump and splits that recalibrate, which distinctions are to be considered as significant. Businesses also need to infuse the same rigor into their taxonomies because classification is the bedrock of algorithms and they drive automated decisions.
Even with the advancements in semantic technologies, humans design taxonomies with machines playing the role of finding patterns of similarity. To ensure that the basis of taxonomy is explainable and repeatable, it would be worthwhile to adopt a few approaches used for building scientific taxonomies.
For instance, taxonomists can use approaches such as homology and analogy to a lump or find commonality among different items. Taxonomists can leverage approaches such as differentia and interoperability for splitting categories into smaller ones.
In a business context, taxonomists can leverage the contrasting concepts homology and analogy, which represent notions of convergence (from differences to similarity) and divergence (from similarity to differences) to create broader categories. At the other end of the spectrum, taxonomists can use differentia as an approach to distinguish which distinctions matter and which are valid. Differentia can be hard to define durably, but it can help taxonomists capture the one key aspect that represents many important issues and help splitting or to create categories based on this key aspect.
Taxonomists can use the interoperability approach to refine broader categories. Taxonomists can use the lack of interoperability—the ability of distinct things to connect easily because they follow a common standard or code of operation—as a sign that these things may not belong together and need to be split and categorized separately.
Taxonomies make information available efficiently and consistently to customers, partners or employees. Therefore, businesses take a rigorous approach to taxonomy design and management. Hence, some of the approaches practiced in the scientific domain can help taxonomists build durable taxonomies for businesses.
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