It has become somewhat mimetic to write something about mimesis. However, once you learn about mimesis, you just can’t unsee it.
Not only do you see mimetic behavior in everything, but you see more and more articles mentioning mimesis.
For better or worse, mimesis explains a lot about human behavior and information management is no exception.
Technology trends are driven by mimesis. Adopting the software because others are adopting it is not necessarily the best reason to implement new software. While there is value in interoperability and collaboration, it may not be the best reason to use certain technology.
The purpose of an organization is to manage and communicate information, but often the focus is on standardizing data to fit into systems rather than making anomalies visible. The information that doesn’t fit neatly is sometimes the most valuable.
Organizational information systems are simplified and idealized versions of neat and tidy data. Unfortunately, data in the real world is messy.
Data creation is messy. Data categorization is messy and data systems are flawed.
There is an alphabet soup of enterprise apps and they are largely the same. They may be tailored for the different information functions of an organization, but they are all based on the same flawed assumption that all the meaningful data related to its function can be accurately captured and managed.
The reality is that even quantitative data that looks the same on the surface may be qualitatively very different.
Some variation may fade away in large data sets, but subtle variation in underlying data can lead to vastly different conclusions.
Enterprise systems like CRM, SCM, HRM and PLM are all based on the premise of standard data, but standard data is illusory.
