The Post-Theoretic Enterprise: A Service-Oriented View

Abstract

This paper argues that our service-oriented conception of the enterprise is poised for a disruptive change. This change will leverage innovations in data science to enable us to continually learn and improve models the models that drive services. It will also enable us to manage these service using model-based dashboards, with models serving as both sensors (enabling us to view operational data using model-based abstractions) and effectors (enabling us to specify desired states of affairs in terms of changes to these models, with the associated machinery computing the necessary actions/interventions required to make the operational machinery to conform to these specifications). These changes need to be viewed in the context of a broader shift towards post-theoretic enterprises, where the traditional, largely static bodies of knowledge that have driven the enterprise will be supplanted by a much more fluid (and datadriven) collection of insights.