[ucaetano]

While I dislike most postmodern philosophy and a good chunk of Foucault's, the core of the article is based on the concept that if you can define how pieces of an industry are named and grouped, you will hold power over how that industry developes.

That is aligned to how Foucault deals with taxonomy: if you have the power to name things, you have power over how people perceive things.

So you shouldn't focus just on your own business when naming and segmenting your company, but also on the lasting impact that such actions will take on competitors, partners and customers.

Edit:

And you can extend and link this to Dawkins' Meme concept. "Discourse", as used by Foucault, carries a similar (but distinct) concept as the Meme, with the key difference that while Meme talks about an idea (communicated or not), discourse references the communication of such an idea.

So building up on the meme-gene comparison, if a meme is a cultural equivalent of a gene, then discourse is the cultural equivalent of the procreation, or dissemination, of an idea.

So, if you can control discourse, you're controlling the creation and dissemination of ideas, you can control how others perceive your company.

[hasbroslasher]

> While I dislike most postmodern philosophy and a good chunk of Foucault's, the core of the article is based on the concept that if you can define how pieces of an industry are named and grouped, you will hold power over how that industry developes.

I'd say there's plenty about postmodern philosophy to dislike outside of this, but I also don't think that this take from Foucault is inherently postmodern. The concept of the "true name" in Abrahamic mysticism is humorously really closely related to Foucault's taxonomy - if you know the true name of a spirit or demon, you can control it in the same way that you can control the image of your business through taxonomy.