Before the adoption of the metric system and standard system of units, error and fraud plagued commercial transactions. With the increase of industry and trade, the need for a standard measurement system increased. Condorcet had dreamed of a universal standard as far back as 1775 that would not be based on any national vanity. It took the French revolution It took the definition of the metre in 1791, the French law of 1795 on weights and measures and much later the foundation of the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures in 1875 to establish the metric system and standardzie measurement. Since then, measurement standards and methods are continuously being refined and will probably never end Franceschini et al., 2019, p. 49-51).
As far back as 1775, Condorcet had dreamed of a universal standard that would not be based on any national vanity. 245 years later, looking at how organizations measure the performance of their IAM practice (just to mention this particular field), I make a similar dream: organizations could cease to continuously reinvent the wheel and start reusing what is just there: research. The more organizations will reuse it, the more feedback research will obtain. The more feedback research obtain, the more research will progress.