Section 18.7. Understanding Our Elephant

18.7. Understanding Our Elephant

The information architecture community has much to learn from this expansive, honest, multifaceted approach to strategy. We are a young field, and we often resemble the illustration that accompanies "The Blind Men and the Elephant" (Figure 18-6). We have yet to develop our schools of thought. And our elephant is a complex, dynamic, and elusive beast . Building toward a collective understanding of information architecture is exasperatingly difficult.

Figure 18-6. The Blind Men and the Elephant (image from http://www.jainworld.com/literature/story25i1.gif)

As we continue to formulate our ideas and methods, we should be wary of those who expound a "one best way." We should embrace many definitions, many methods , and many facets. We should also be on the lookout for early indicators of trends that suggest new directions and new schools of thought for information architecture. It would be nave to think our practice has matured in less than a decade .

This is not to say that we haven't made great progress already. The practice of information architecture has come a long way since the early 1990s. We began with highly centralized, top-down approaches, attempting to leverage careful planning into stable solutions. We did some good work but learned the hard way that change is a constant and surprises should be expected. More recently, we've been exploring bottom-up approaches that tap the distributed intelligence within our organizations to nurture emergent, adaptive solutions. The following table compares classic or "top-down" IA to modern or "bottom-up" IA:

As we struggle with these ideas, an interesting question arises: do we create information architectures or reveal them?

In Information Ecology , Thomas Davenport and Laurence Prusak have this to say on the topic:

From an ecological perspective, identifying what information is available today and where it can be found is a much better use of architectural design than attempting to model the future. Information mapping is a guide to the present information environment. It may describe not only the location of information, but also who is responsible for it, what it is used for, who is entitled to it, and how accessible it is.

This provocative statement is partly true, but it's also partly false. Information mapping is a useful approach that more of us should embrace, but it doesn't negate the value of other approaches. Remember, we are all blind men, and information architecture is our elephant.

18.8. Competitive Advantage

The fact that we can't see the whole picture doesn't mean we shouldn't forge ahead. The disciplines of business strategy and information architecture are dauntingly abstract and complex. But we can't fall victim to analysis paralysis. In the world of business, both disciplines are useless if they don't contribute to the development of sustainable competitive advantage.

On this vital subject, business strategy can teach us one more lesson. In short, the invisible nature of our work can contribute to our competitive advantage. Geoffrey Moore reveals this hidden opportunity with respect to business strategy. In Living on the Fault Line , Moore presents a competitive-advantage hierarchy to show the multi-layered foundation upon which strategy is built (Figure 18-7).

Figure 18-7. A competitive-advantage hierarchy

Moore explains that while most people focus on the top layer of differentiated offerings (e.g., branding and positioning), businesses can achieve lasting competitive advantage only by building from the bottom up.

At the base lies the technology itself, the core of cores. On top of it form value chains to translate its potential into actuality. Atop this evolution lie specific markets . . . Within all markets, companies compete against each other based on their ability to execute their strategy . . . The ultimate expression of this competition, the surface stratum that is visible for all to see, is an array of differentiated offerings that compete directly for customers and consumers on the basis of price, availability, product features, and services . . . In technology-enabled markets, corporations, like tall buildings , must sink their foundations down through all the strata to secure solid footing in competitive advantage.

While the media pundits and water- cooler jockeys rant and rave about branding and positioning, the strategic decisions with long- term implications are happening beneath the surface, invisible to the outside world and to many corporate "insiders." The invisible nature of this strategy work confers greater gains to leaders and thwarts copycat competitors .