Most taxonomies are set up in a hierarchical tree format. Our team consists of four distinct trees for each facet of how a business operates. Developing the taxonomy and software over the last 8 years, we found at some point that the tree structure became too strict. There were certain categories that did not want to be under just one parent category. A prime example of this situation is video game companies. These companies make software for entertainment purposes. As this industry has matured, it has become closely link with the big entertainment companies, and they employ teams of artists, writers as well as programmers. Historically, these businesses should be software, but they are also so tied closely to entertainment companies it seems odd that when searching for entertainment companies that these would not turn up in our search results. One solution is to move video game studios to under the entertainment category, but then we lose the software aspect of the business. Our team's solution was to change the nature of our trees. We now allow nodes to have multiple parents, and create what I call the "Banyan" tree, which is a tree from India that has multiple trunks to the ground.
Looking at the Wikipedia article, we see that the banyan tree name comes from the Gujarti word for merchant, because merchant markets were often located under these great trees. It seems appropriate for a business taxonomy.
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