Seth Godin
If you need to add a word to the dictionary, it's
pretty clear where it goes. The dictionary is a handy reminder of how
taxonomies work. The words aren't sorted by length, or frequency or date of
first usage. They're sorted by how they're spelled. This makes it easy to find
and organize.
The alphabet is an
arbitrary taxonomy, without a lot of wisdom built in (are the letters in that
order because of the song?).
It's way more useful to
consider taxonomies that are based on content or usage.
Almost everything we
understand is sorted into some sort of taxonomy. Foods, for example: we
understand intuitively that chard is close to spinach, not chicken, even though
the first two letters are the same.
The taxonomy of food
helps you figure out what to eat next, because you understand what might be a
replacement for what's not available.
Shopify has more in
common with Udemy (both tech startups) than it does with the Bank of
Canada (both based in Ottawa).
Your job, if you want to
explain a field, if you want to understand it, if you want to change it, is to
begin with the taxonomy of how it's explained and understood.
Once you understand a
taxonomy, you've got a chance to re-organize it in a way that is even more
useful.
Too often, we get lazy
and put unrelated bullet points next to each other, or organize in order
of invention. For example, we teach high school biology before (and separate
from) chemistry, even though you can't understand biology without chemistry (and
you can certainly understand chemistry without biology). We do this because we
started working on biology thousands of years before we got smart about
chemistry, and the order stuck.
The reason an
entrepreneur needs a taxonomy is that she can find the holes, and figure
out how to fill them.
And a teacher needs one,
because creating a mental model is the critical first step in understanding how
the world works.
If you can't build a
taxonomy for your area of expertise, then you're not an expert in it.
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