Starfish are great creatures. They crawl around and eat things, but do little else. Or, so one would think. The authors detail the uniqueness of starfish. In process, they detail how the attributes of these creatures metaphorically describe successful decentralized organizations. The principle is that there is no centralized control center in either leaderless organizations, or starfish. As a result, both are able to adapt to changes that would normally threaten other mechanisms. This is a lesson many organizations should learn because it allows them to adapt to a world that details little stability. All in all, a readable book with great insight.

The Starfish and the Spider was recommended to me and looked forward in diving into it. I love books on new organizational ideas. Though, I was very disappointed with this book, it doesn't contain much new ideas and instead is a shallow and black/white overview of much earlier work.

The book divides the world in either centralized or decentralized and looks at the two extremes for their advantages and disadvantages. It then tells stories (which are often interesting, though not always well-researched) about centralized vs decentralized ways of organizing. It talks about MGM vs P2P and about US vs Apache. Though, it draws somewhat simplistic conclusions from these stories, somewhat drawn out of context.

It then tries to combine the two extremes in a hybrid organization and gives eBay as an example.

Centralized vs decentralized organizations is an interesting topic, though there are more interesting books on this subject than this one. For example, Thomas Malone "The Future of Work" was more insightful than this book and it provides a huge bibliography for further research on this subject. Don't read this book, unless you do so for the stories.

This book focuses on a new revolution you might have missed--what happens in movements without a hierarchy. The authors announce, "A lack of traditional leadership is giving rise to powerful groups that are turning industry and society upside down."

Cut off a spider's head and the poor guy is dead meat. Slice a leg off a starfish and the separated leg rejuvenates into a new starfish. There's a new sea change afoot of decentralized organizations (starfish) that are giving the top-down centralized organizations (spiders) a run for their money.

For an entertaining, but highly informative and important look at why the Apaches, the Quakers, Alcoholics Anonymous, Skype, eMule, Wikipedia, craigslist and other "open source" movements have changed and are changing the world, be sure someone on your team reads this book. You'll be dropping insights from the principles of decentralization into every conversation.

The nonprofit and ministry world is not unaccustomed to leaderless movements. Just check out the number of small group Bible studies most mornings at your local Starbucks or Denny's. Yet your vision will explode with new ideas and opportunities once you understand why when MGM (a spider) won their Supreme Court decision against Napster, they really lost.

Here are some conversation starters: 1) What is it about Wikipedia and craigslist--free services--that make them so appealing to millions of people? 2) Are there any centralized programs or services that your company, organization or denomination could decentralize and give away in the starfish mode?

Peter Drucker encouraged companies to "slough off yesterday"--one of the five balls in the "Results Bucket" of my book, Mastering The Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Non-profit. He said you must prune back to have capacity for the new opportunities coming your way. In the end, it's all about results. Some products, programs and services should be dropped--others might work well in the starfish mode. But focus on results, not leadership methodologies or systems.

Robert Byrne said, "There are two kinds of people, those who finish what they start and so on..." Leaderless organizations do work--but usually those who lead them don't truly finish what they start. It takes incredible discipline--which is often the reason why some folks flee the bureaucracy in the first place--they don't like leaders and they themselves are not leaders. It's a Catch-22, only worse!

Academic technology organizations are "starfishes" - in that authority and knowledge are distributed - and that we are mission driven. Recommended to anyone who thinks about organizational effectiveness. This book fits beautifully within the genre of short works that communicate serious academic research by telling interesting stories and providing fascinating examples. We don't assign enough books like this in our college courses - thinking that since is a "popularizing" book it must therefore be "inferior". I'm starting to think that we've been too snobby....and that in privileging good writing and storytelling over total academic rigor we may be inhibiting our students from absorbing the central points.

I am a corporate director of human resources and continually look for material to use in professional development of our managers. I enjoyed this book and found it an interesting read that stimulated thought. However, as I read the book, I found I kept making notes in the margin where I disagreed with the book or at least, questioned the premise.

Over the decades, I had a colleague that worked for a large manufacturer that produced engine parts. This organization led a decentralized existence and was very proud of this accomplishment. The company was managed with those "picky" supervisor and managers hanging around sucking up the company profit. Another friend was associated with the clothing manufacturing industry and proudly proclaimed how his people worked in self-guided "cells". Years ago, both companies failed to maintain profitability and filed for bankruptcy.

I am reminded of the lessons in Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't where the emphasis is on the humble manager versus the flamboyant leader type. The humble manager ensures the company is not about him or her but rather builds an organization that can weather most storms. For me, this is preferable to decentralized organizations. Some decentralization is needed for creativity and nimbleness. But as a general rule, give me the centralized with humble leadership.

Michael L. Gooch, SPHR Author of Wingtips with Spurs

While doing business in the US and in Latin America, I had been able to clearly identify the starfish and spider organizations. Larger companies with a lot of history are very rigid and change is a word that is not in their lexicon. They are based on respect, code of conduct and status which leads to a slow decision making process.

New companies with flexible structure are willing to try new thing and norms of behavior matter more than codes of conduct. These companies are becoming more successful since their time to market is shorter and able to react to market threats.

I enjoy the reading and learn some strategies on how to deal with both kinds of companies.

A recommended lecture for leaders and strategists.

Like Steven Levitt's "Freakonomics", "The Starfish and the Spider" is a single cogent chapter surrounded by 160 pages of pabulum.

While the book is derivative, trotting out old canards to make and remake a point, the initial premise is intriguing. Organizations that resemble a starfish are more successful than those that are patterned on the spider. I'll leave to Mssrs. Brafman and Beckstrom to make their own case.

There are several maddeningly infuriating statements in the book. On one had the authors praise the efforts of a an animal rights activist who teaches others on the fine points of sabotaging hunts. These new volunteers head into the woods, stalk hunters, and then disrupt the hunt by using airhorns or driving the game away. (Let's not even go THERE, into the discussion of the morals of hunting.) Later, in the same chapter, the same aw-shucks wonder is offered to a group of vigilantes in an unknown country who go out hunting al-Qaeda cells with government supplied ammunition and no due process. What are the lessons here?

The value in the book is the main premise. Read chapters 1 and 5 and, by George, you've got it!

Also, I am weary of every business book taking the obligatory shots against record labels while lauding the "democratization" of music through on-line sharing. How about someone scanning this book in a PDF format, and, using a starfish organization, putting it on line for anyone to download for free?

For a more serious and thoughtful discussion of these issues, I would recommend Don Tapscott's book "Wikinomics."

A truly interesting exploration of all, ok the most likely probabilities, of centralised and decentralised communities of business environments in our modern culture.

Even though this book comes highly recommended and already went on its way in the same fashion as received I urge the reader to note that there is a complete source reference at the end of the book. This peace of information would have saved me some time while reading but more important gave me the confidence that I would be able to draw on this knowledge post the consumption of the information in this book.

It is truly a magnificent journey and a highly recommended read. The only reason I did not give it a five out of five rating is that I, and yes this is a personal point of view, would have appreciated the writer to let go of the script and the purpose for this fascinating book and allow their passion to flow through even if they had to apologise for it later. But it still holds a lot of water.

Nutshell review - This is a very interesting and insightful book about centralized vs. decentralized organizations, from companies to terrorist cells. Well written with interesting and useful insights.

As succinctly illustrated in Rod Beckstrom's book The Starfish and the Spider, the massively complex and dynamic ecosystems of today's highly matrixed corporations can more effectively adapt to the market dynamics by way of decentralized competency teams. Substantial organizational inertia creates difficult personality dynamics, and also has the potential to bring out highly destructive corporate politics in any effort to drive meaningful change. Our research, coupled with the digitization of social networks, highlights a strategic asset in any manager, leader, or executive's investment of time and energy in not only creating decentralized teams, but also in nurturing productive relationships in their dynamic environments.

In contrast to the Industrial Age - in which much of the current command and control organizational structure was focused on capital as the most valuable resource - the current multigenerational workforce leverages a very different asset for creating shareholder value. The highly integrated business unit, operating company, or division, which mobilizes and leverages its broad-based intellectual capital, tends to waste fewer cycles in redundant market penetration, talent acquisition, and strategic supplier relationships. Instead, their intracompany, as well as external relationship development efforts, can translate into not only more rewarding, productive work for its current and future talent, but also a greater Return on Capital at a relatively low risk.

Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom are entrepreneurs. In "The Starfish and the Spider" they express their fascination of decentralized organizations, and their impact on the business world. Based on numerous examples, ranging from Alcoholics Anonymous to Skype and Wikipedia, they present to us a model of decentralized organization and the new business rules it implies.

A decentralized organization, compared to Starfish, can be defined by several characteristics, such as:

1. No specific person in charge and no headquarters, which imply that it's not easy to destroy it by "thumping it on the head"
2. An amorphous division of roles, so that the organization would not be affected by losing any of its units
3. Distribution of knowledge and power
4. Flexibility
5. Self-funding of units
6. Direct communication between the working groups

On top of the above characteristics, the authors define five building blocks of starfish organizations:

1. Circles: Decentralized organizations consist of autonomous and independent circles. When using Internet for communication, the circles become virtual, which are very easy to form and join. However, virtual circles also lack bonding between its members, and may be subject to free-riding or destructive behavior. Circles lack hierarchy or structure, but instead they depend on norms for realizing their objectives. These norms are self-enforced, members enforce them with one another. As a result, there is a sense of trust among the community.

2. The Catalyst: According to the authors, every open organization starts with a catalyst - a person who initiates a circle and then moves into the background, giving away control to the members. Catalysts let go of the leadership role, and transfer it to the circle.

3. Ideology: Decentralized organizations are built on a foundation of shared ideology.

4. The Preexisting Network: Very often, starfish organizations are started from the basis of a preexisting, decentralized platform. Currently, the Internet has become such platform. Because there are almost no entrance barriers for the Internet, it is very easy to launch web-based decentralized organizations in this environment.

5. The Champion: The champion represents another key role in starfish organizations, next to the catalyst. While catalysts envision the organization and inspire the members, champions actually implement the ideas and drive execution. Champions are key in gaining a critical mass of any movement, as they engage new members and "sell" the catalysts' vision.

Following the description of leaderless organizations, the authors define several rules that apply to the business world affected by decentralization:

1. Decentralized organizations tend to become more open and decentralized when attacked, while centralized organizations react with greater centralization to an attack.
2. Centralized and decentralized organizations are not easy to distinguish.
3. The knowledge and intelligence are spread throughout the system of starfish organizations.
4. Open systems can easily mutate.
5. The decentralized organization advance and grow unnoticed.
6. As industries become decentralized, overall profits decrease.
7. People are eager to contribute when they are in an open system.

Other topics covered in the book include a characteristic of catalysts, strategies to combat starfish organizations, and a hybrid business model (introducing decentralized elements into a centralized organization).

Overall, the book is quite an easy read thanks to many stories and examples. The ideas presented in the book are novel and may stimulate a rethinking of the rigid business models. However, it's only a popular book - there is no evidence supporting the presented models and principles, and everything is based on observation and conclusion from several examples.

This book is simply a great read. The best part about this book is the writing itself. It's simple, short and to the point. This book could have easily been dragged out over 400 pages, but it wasn't. It was just the right size.

Moreover, the concepts in the book were very well explained. My favorite section deals with how to battle something that is decentralized. This section is fantastic.

The only criticism I have is that the authors did not use a large variety of examples to support their arguments. They usually stuck to the same companies or anecdotes and just applied them to different situations. And don't get me wrong, they worked in each scenario. I just think it would've made the book that much better had they used a larger variety of real life examples.

I expected this book to make me think - based on both the title and others' recommendations - and it delivered. Insightful and thought-provoking.

I agree in principal with the authors of Starfish and the Spider, that the Internet has decentralized decisionmaking. Their hybrid solution, a centralized corporate decisionmaking combined with decentralized elements(this Amazon opinion sharing and ranking is a good example) is likely a more critical chapter of their book and to understanding how this can be applied to real life. The fact remains, that centralized decisionmaking will always be indispensable to the success of organizations. However, the ability of these centralized organization to accomodate "decentralized" decisionmaking as has been the case for decades with Japanese companies described in William Ouchi's book, Theory Z (e.g., Japan's "Ringi" system), will always be a key determining factor for the success of large organizations. The authors make only brief mention of this fact. The notion that such starfish organizations and decisionmaking is new to modern behavior as implied in their book, is simply not true. Our problem in the West is that we take only a western perspective on all things, and it does a disservice to the advancement of our organizations.

If you cut off a spider's leg, it is crippled and likely to die. If you cut off the leg of a starfish, it grows a new one. Fascinatingly, the severed leg can grow into a second starfish. That is the metaphor alluded to in the title of The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom.

This book focuses on making the case that: "The absence of structure, leadership, and formal organization, once considered a weakness, has become a major asset."

However, the authors inform us that: "...a decentralized system is not the same as anarchy. There are rules and norms, but these aren't enforced by any one person. Rather, the power is distributed among all the people and across geographic regions."

It is this distribution that allows decentralized systems to be more resilient than centralized ones. The book explores case studies and examines the operational principles behind such organizations: what is required for them to form, how is critical mass gained, and what holds them together through time.

The second half of the book takes a different turn, discussing how a centralized organization can take on a decentralized one. Out of that comes the recommendation of a hybrid organization, which blends best practices from each end of the spectrum.

Included among the companies in the book are Craigslist, with its free classifieds, and eBay, with its user-vetted reputations. While each of these systems are decentralized, they are a product created by the business, which operates largely externally to the business itself.

I would have preferred a deeper analysis of businesses that operate internally in a decentralized fashion. Perhaps there are none, however.

Despite that, The Starfish and the Spider offers many insights that make it worth reading. It provides a solid starting point for further reading and additional understanding, if that is desired.

Captivating read with great and illustrative examples. Ori Brafman and Rob Beckstrom explore the impact of the rise of decentralization in modern enterprise, social movements, and information control. The book investigates the rise of Wikipedia, Craiglist, EBay, as well as, the impact of the blogosphere and fight against terrorism among many others. Beginning with the analysis of the starfish and the spider metaphor, the authors go on to analyze the rise of decentralized organizations and movements: their weak points, their strong points, and their (ever rising) impact on our society.

"Starfish and the Spider" is an educational, and a thought provoking read. Given the rising importance of distributed starfish movements (from Bittorrent to Wikipedia to terrorism), this is definitely a book worth your time - it will give you a great theoretical and historical base, introduce you to the nomenclature, and allow you to make sense of the latest social and business trends.

In this book, the authors address the differences between starfish and spider organizations. A spider has a tiny head and eight legs coming out of a central body. If you chop off the spider's head, it dies. A centralized organization has a clear leader who's in charge. Get rid of the leader and you paralyze the organization. A decentralized organization is a starfish. The starfish doesn't have a head. The major organs are replicated throughout each and every arm.

In 2005, MGM sued Grokster because it allowed the sharing of music and movies over the Internet. Five years earlier, Napster was sued for allowing file sharing. The recording industry went after the people who were swapping the music as well. But this did not prevent the problem of music piracy. The harder they fought, the stronger the opposition grew. The best explanation for these events comes from a book by Tom Nevins about the Apaches.

Spanish explorer Cortes fought the Aztec, who had a central government, and took their gold; killed their leader; and starved the city's inhabitants. Two years later the entire Aztec empire had collapsed. The same fate befell the Incas. But they lost against the Apaches. It was all about the way the Apaches were organized as a society. The Apaches distributed political power and had very little centralization. They persevered because they were decentralized. A centralized organization has a clear leader who's in charge. In a decentralized system there's no clear leader and no hierarchy. The power is distributed among all the people and across geographic regions. Instead of a chief, the Apaches had a Nant'an--a spiritual and cultural leader who led by example. As soon as the Spaniards killed a Nant'an, a new one would emerge. No one person was essential to the overall well-being of Apache society. When attacked, a decentralized organization tends to become even more open and decentralized. Every time the labels sue a Napster, a new player comes onto the scene that's even more decentralized and more difficult to battle. The harder you fight a decentralized opponent, the stronger it gets.

Some examples of starfish organizations:

(a) The Internet is a decentralized starfish network where no one is in charge. Spider organizations have structures, hierarchies, and a president.
(b) At Alcoholics Anonymous, no one is in charge. If you were to ask how many members or chapters it has, there'd be no way to tell because it is an open system. An open system doesn't have centralized intelligence; the intelligence is spread throughout the system. Spider organizations weave their webs over long periods of time, but the starfish can take over an entire industry in the blink of an eye.
(c) Craigslist attracts three billion page views a month. The way craigslist runs is that people who use it post, and if they find something inappropriate they flag it for approval. So the people who use the site run it. It allows users to interact with each other directly without anybody telling anybody else what they can and cannot do. In an open system, what matters most isn't the CEO, but whether the leadership is trusting enough of members to leave them alone.
(d) The first popular browser for surfing the Web came from the University of Illinois. But the University did not respond when engineers sent patches to be integrated, so they decided to post the patches on their own and called the project Apache. The software was completely open-source, and Apache quickly became the industry standard, with 67 percent of websites running on it.
(e) Wikipedia allows website users to easily edit, police, and contribute the content of the site themselves. Put people into an open system and they'll automatically want to contribute! When you give people freedom you get incredible creativity and a variety of expressions.

Differences between Spider organizations and starfish organizations:

(a) Most centralized organizations are divided into departments. If a spider loses a leg, its mobility is significantly affected. Units of a decentralized organization are completely autonomous. Cut off a unit and, like a starfish, the organization does just fine.
(b) In spider companies, power is concentrated at the top. In starfish organizations, power is spread throughout.
(c) Decentralized organizations are fluid. Centralized organizations depend more on rigid structure. It is possible to count the members of any spider organization, but members of starfish organizations are impossible to count because anyone can become a member.
(d) Information in centralized organizations is processed through headquarters. In open systems, communication occurs directly between members.
(e) In decentralized organizations, the founder plays the role of a catalyst. He would lead by example, but he never forces his views on others. A catalyst gets the decentralized organization going and then cedes control to the members.

Strategies to combat a starfish invasion:

(a) Ideology, the shared philosophy among members, is the glue that holds decentralized organizations together. If the ideology can be successfully changed, the results are detrimental.
(b) The Apaches remained a significant threat until the Americans prevailed by giving the Nant'ans cattle. Once people gain a right to property they quickly seek out a centralized system to protect their interests. The moment you introduce property rights, the starfish organization turns into a spider.
(c) If you can't beat them, join them. The best opponent for a starfish organization is another starfish.

This is by far the best business management book I have read this year!

Patrick Lencioni's latest book may be the best book yet about the PositiveWare tagline, Give Work Meaning.

Fortunately, this is also his best book period. Unlike the fantasy nature of "Five Mistakes of A CEO", this is also patterned as a fable, and yet is totally believable.

Our hero, Brian Bailey, is a CEO who sells a company. In the sale of his company he finds that the acquirer and the banker do not place a lot of value in his belief that it his people that have made the difference in building the company.

Upon his retirement as a golf and ski bum in Tahoe and a subsequent ski injury he finds himself bored and depressed and looking for something to do. He becomes part owner of an Italian food restaurant that has seen better days. He is motivated to do this because the employees in this restaurant appear to hate their jobs, and aren't very good at them. "How do these people get out of bed and come to work every day" he asks himself. In other words, what gives their work meaning?

Using the restaurant as his own management laboratory, he finds that the answer lies in three simple ideas: Immeasurement, Irrelevance, and Anonymity.

Immeasurement is the idea that there is no measure for success for a person's work, and/or that the measure is not timely or under the person's control.

Irrelevance is the idea that a person's work is not important to another person.

Anonymity is the idea that an employee doesn't have personal relationships at work.

The solution is to create daily measures, identify your customer in the business and care about your employees.

The challenging part of this recipe is the cure for anonymity, which involves asking managers to become personally interested and care about their employees. This means a lot of discomfort for HR managers, who are used to forbidding personal questions as part of the interview process, but must relax that stricture on a post-hire basis.

This book was great in the highest sense of great. A great book is one that has thoughtful material as well as it being well written. This book is both. It talks about the push to decentralize organizations and the beauty or influence that these organizations are able to have. It is a great defense for the church being non-denominational. Personally, I saw a lot of parallels to non-denominationalism in the book. It is not a church book, but speaks loudly to a church world. That the church should be a organization that is more like the starfish than the spider. In fact, you see the first century church functioning like the organizations that are highlighted. I highly recommend this book, one of the best books of the year for me.

The Starfish and the Spider offers an intriguing, if somewhat superficial, look at the differences between centralized and decentralized, or "leaderless," organizations. Spanning the time period from the early European conquest of the Americas (and why the Spanish could defeat the Aztecs but not the Apaches) to today's terrorist threats and Internet-based movements, the authors provide useful principles to characterize the two types of organizations and offer insights on effects such as the centralizing of power in American government following 9/11. While the book could benefit more from an underlying theoretical analysis of these organization types, the authors present a compelling argument for why many organizations should go "hybrid" and adopt the power of both the starfish and the spider. As a CIO this helped me better understand many Internet social movements of today, and as a university administrator I found this very pertinent to life in a decentralized organization.

The title of this book is accurate, but somewhat misleading. I admit that I purchased the book with some trepidation because I am a strong proponent of the value of strong leadership in any organizational structure.

"Starfish" isn't an apologetic for leaderless organizations as much as it is an expose'. The authors carefully take you through "what" a leaderless organization actually is and outline its history, uniqueness and provide real-life examples of various incarnations that will certainly be familiar to every reader. Most of us have experienced (or even participated) in these organizations whether we consciously realize it or not. But the authors (wisely) fall short of making hard recommendations and leave it to the reader to decide what impact this new genre of organization will bring. I suspect the dialog will be on-going.

If you are a leader who likes to stay on the leading edge and is at ease with thinking outside of your comfortable parameters, then you will enjoy this book. It is informative, yet easy to read and always interesting in its presentation of the content.

I found "Starfish" to be educational, provoking, challenging and confronting. I'm witting this review as a result of being inspired from the book to participate in a decentralized effort! Enjoy!

The title of the book comes from the analogous use of the starfish and the spider. A spider has eight legs coming out of a central body. It has a tiny head and eight eyes. If you cut off the spider's head, it dies. It may survive without a leg or two or even stand to lose a couple of eyes, but it certainly can't live without its head.

On the other hand, while a starfish may appear to be similar to the central body and multiple legs of the spider, it is really quite different. The starfish doesn't have a head. Its central body isn't even in charge. In fact, the major organs are replicated throughout each and every arm. If you cut the starfish in half, the animal won't die and pretty soon you'll have two starfish.

The authors provide an entertaining description of the starfish system:

"Starfish have an incredible quality to them: If you cut an arm off, most of these animals grow a new arm. And with some varieties, such as the Linckia, or long-armed starfish, the animal can replicate itself from just a single piece of an arm. You can cut the Linckia into a bunch of pieces, and each one will regenerate into a whole new starfish. They can achieve this magical regeneration because in reality a starfish is a neural network - basically a network of cells. Instead of having a head, like a spider, the starfish functions as a decentralized network. Get this: for the starfish to move, one of the arms must convince the other arms that it's a good idea to do so. The arm starts moving and then - in a process that no one fully understands - the other arms cooperate and move as well. The brain doesn't "yea" or "nay" the decision. In truth, there isn't even a brain to declare a "yea" or "nay." The starfish doesn't have a brain. There is no central command. Biologists are still scratching their heads over how this creature operates."

With the analogy firmly in place the authors precede to illustrate the power of decentralized organizations in today's internet savvy world (using examples as varied as eBay, al Qaeda, eMule, Craigslist, AA, and Wikipedia) with those that are much more centralized. In the midst of this discussion they offer six principles of decentralization:

1. When attacked, a decentralized organization tends to become even more open and decentralized.

2. It's easy to mistake starfish for spiders.

3. An open system doesn't have central intelligence; the intelligence is spread throughout the system.

4. Open systems can easily mutate.

5. The decentralized organization sneaks up on you.

6. As industries become decentralized, overall profits decrease.

But how does one go about identifying a Starfish organization? The answer is found in asking the right questions:

1. Is there a person in charge?

2. Are there headquarters?

3. If you thump it on the head, will it die?

4. Is there a clear division of roles?

5. If you take out a unit, is the organization harmed?

6. Are knowledge & power concentrated or distributed?

7. Is the organization flexible or rigid?

8. Can you count the employees or participants?

9. Are working groupls funded by the organization, or are they self-funding?

10. Do working groups communicate directly or through intermediaries?

The authors contend that a decentralized organization stands on five legs. As with the starfish, it can lose a leg or two and still survive. But when you have all the legs working together, a decentralized organization can really take off. These "legs" include:

Leg 1. Circles. Small, nonhierarchical groups of people with each group maintaining its own particular habits and norms.

Leg 2. The Catalyst. The person who initiates a circle and then fades away into the background.

Leg 3. Ideology. The glue that holds decentralized organizations together.

Leg 4. A Preexisting Network. Infrastructure or preexisting platform to launch from.

Leg 5. A Champion. A relentless promoter of the new idea.

One of the most helpful aspects of this portion of the book comes in a chapter titled "The Hidden Power of the Catalyst." The following chart summarizes the different tools that the CEO and catalysts type of leader draws upon:

CEO vs. Catalyst

The Boss -- A Peer
Command & Control -- Trust
Powerful -- Inspirational
Directive -- Collaborative
In the Spotlight -- Behind the Scenes
Order -- Ambiguity
Organizing -- Connecting

The authors conclude this chapter by stating:

"This type of leadership isn't ideal for all situations. Catalysts are bound to rock the boat. They are much better at being agents of change than guardians of tradition. Catalysts do well in situations that call for radical change and creative thinking. They bring innovation, but they're also likely to create a certain amount of chaos and ambiguity. Put them into a structured environment, and they might suffocate. But let them dream and they'll thrive." (can anyone say "church planter")

In the final chapter the authors offer what they perceive to be the "new rules to the game" in regards to understanding and capitalizing on the power of decentralized organizations:

Rule 1: Dis-economies of Scale

Traditionally, the bigger the company or institution the greater the power. However, as counterintuitive as this sounds, it can be better to be small. . . . We have entered a new world where being small can provide a fundamental economic advantage.

Rule 2: The Network Effect

The network effect is the increase in the overall value of the network with the addition of each new member. "Often without spending a dime, starfish organizations create communities where each new member adds value to the larger network. . . . Companies like eBay have used the network effect not only to survive but to thrive: buyers and sellers have stayed loyal to the site because of the value of network.

Rule 3: The Power of Chaos

Starfish systems are wonderful incubators for creative, destructive, innovative, or crazy ideas. Anything goes. Good ideas will attract more people, and in a circle they'll execute the plan. Institute order and rigid structure, and while you may achieve standardization, you'll also squelch creativity. Where creativity is valuable, learning to accept chaos is a must.

Rule 4: Knowledge at the Edge

In starfish organizations, knowledge is spread throughout the organization. Wikipedia may be the best example of this rule.

Rule 5: Everyone Wants to Contribute

Not only do people throughout a starfish have knowledge, but they also have a fundamental desire to share and to contribute. Once again is the example of Wikipedia or free book reviews on Amazon.

Rule 6: Beware the Hydra Response

Attack a decentralized organization and you'll soon be reminded of Hydra, the many-headed beast of Greek mythology. If you cut off one head, two more will grow in its place.

Rule 7: Catalysts Rule

Catalysts are crucial to decentralized organizations! But it is not because they are in control but because they inspire people to action.

Rule 8: The Values are the Organization

Idology is the fuel that drives the decentralized organization. Most successful starfish organizations were started with what seemed at the time to be a radical ideology.

Rule 9: Measure, Monitor, and Manage

Just because starfish organizations tend to be ambiguous and chaotic doesn't mean that their results can't be measured. But when measuring a decentralized network, it's better to "be vaguely right than precisely wrong." Even if we could, it wouldn't really matter if we were able to get a precise count of how many members are in a network. What matters more is looking at circles. How active are they? How distributed is the network?

Rule 10: Flatten or Be Flattened

There are ways to fight a decentralized organization. We can change members' ideology or try to centralize the organization. But often the best hope for survival if we can't beat them is to join them.

Whether or not you care about leaderless, borderless and/or decentralized organizations, labeled as starfish organizations, they probably affect your life in some way or another whether you have downloaded music or avoided it, dealt with PETA, looked up something in Wikipedia, had actions of al-Qaeda affect your life in some way like stricter restrictions at the airports, etc. In that sense, you might as well get to know something about them to make better use of them or be prepared to deal with them effectively when you have to. If you read this book, you will likely not just want to know or know more about them, but get involved to see what they're all about or get more involved.

Written from both an overview and hands-on approach, this book is not only useful as a reference but also as a manual on the issue. The book identified the qualities of starfish organizations and what makes them effective, how anyone and everyone could start, sustain and/or get involved in these organizations, the types of people key to such organizations and how to combat them if you're on the other side. The book also warns about the constant change involved with maintaining starfish organizations and how to deal with them. Guidelines are offered and useful real life examples illustrate them to bring to life what otherwise be just concepts.

I had two small criticisms about the book, but nothing major enough to deter it from getting the five star rating I felt it deserved. First was that a few more real life examples of starfish organizations and/or their actions could have been chosen to illustrate some of the points made. There were plenty of diverse examples, but so many more abound as I read and thought about traits and qualities of starfish organizations that if mentioned, readers would realize even more influence starfish organizations have had in their lives. Second was that it did not address how government could use this book to decentralize since decentralization could be so powerful but yet government is the epitomy of centralization. I work for government, and felt government badly needed this, but had to think it through myself to come up with uses for attracting colleagues to my Starfish and Spider for Lunch (and Learn) voluntary book review session. When I did, though, not only was I excited at the possibilities, but also at the challenge to try to convince senior management of this, although that will take time. I will contact the authors to address this issue in a follow-up companion, perhaps, as they are the experts on this, but if nothing else, my ability to customize an application to government should tell you something about the book's effectiveness as a manual.

Overall, for the excellent writing style, clarity, impact and general application to the masses, five starfish!

This book is great. A must read for those interested in being flexible and evolving. Has important applications across multiple work environments.

It took me some time to warm to this book. Nothing much happens in the initial 80 pages. The first chapter develops two fairly tortuous case studies - the vicissitudes of fortune in the recording industry in the last decade and the struggle of the Apaches against the Spanish invaders - to introduce the theme of the book. Then follows a discussion of the morphology of decentralised organisations (in terms of power distribution, funding, etc). Chapter 3 illustrates these formal characteristics with a series of examples, ranging from Skype over Wikipedia to Burning Man. There is honestly not a lot of meat to chew on in these first chapters and some patience is required from the reader.

It becomes more interesting in Chapter 4 where Brafman and Beckstrom discuss operational principles behind decentralised organisations (the need for pre-existing networks as a substrate, the role of catalysts and champions to activate leaderless organisation, "circles" as their chief co-ordination mechanism, and "ideology" as the glue holding everything more or less together). The role of the catalyst as a "servant leader" (term, however, not used by the authors) is further elaborated in the fifth chapter.

In chapter 6, the discussion turns to the question "What do you do, as an incumbent, when you are under fire from a starfish?" It transpires that there is not an awful lot to be done: you can try to morph them into a spider by activating internal cancer cells (greed and competition), you can try to dissolve or change the glue, the ideology that keeps the structure together or you can join them and become decentralised too (then it's starfish against starfish).

Brafman and Beckstrom maintain that it is not always necessary to go all the way and radically decentralise. There is such thing as a "hybrid" organisation (Chapter 7), which mixes principles of centralisation and decentralisation. Here the discussion suddenly gets denser and this is a part of the book that warrants repeated reading. A distinction is made between centralised organisations that give customers a voice (eBay with its peer-to-peer feedback is an example), those that put their customers to work (IBM developing open source applications) and those that decentralise parts of their internal structure. Towards the end of the chapter, however, the discussion peters out. "Appreciative Enquiry" is invoked as an approach to bring a whiff of decentralisation into companies who want to hang on to their centralised bureaucracies. It's a dangerous example that may tempt people into crass opportunism (that is, however, bound to backfire on them).

Finally, the authors hypothesise that in a given ecosystem there is no static equilibrium in terms of right mix of centralised/decentralised characteristics ("right" in terms of securing survival and the ability to extract economic rent). The "sweet spot" changes as a function of time, sometimes dramatically so. The desire for anonymity and the free flow of information are forces that push towards the decentralisation end, whilst the desire for security and accountability pull the system back to a more centralised mode of operation.

The book closes with a short epilogue that lists 10 simple guiding principles to make the most out of decentralised organisations or to defend yourself from their attacks.

On the whole, I enjoyed this book. It provides an intelligent and accessible discussion of a complex issue. With respect to the latter, the authors do a laudable job in keeping thing simple, but sometimes it's over the top. Particularly in the first halve of the book, their penchant for telling anecdotes and stories makes them err on the side of the trivial (a discussion on Wikipedia starts with "we all remember doing school reports in the sixth grade. Back then, research meant going to the library and hoping the that the Encyclopaedia Brittanica wasn't checked out ... and so on, and so on.) I was irked more than once by the patronising and befuddling prose of Brafman & Beckstrom. Admittedly, sometimes they hit it right. The title of the book, for example, is a very strong and aptly chosen metaphor for decentralised and centralised organisations, respectively.

Also I believe this book does not exhaust the potential of this fascinating subject matter. I think the discussion would have gained significantly in clarity and power if only a number of well known systems science principles (such as Ashby's Law of Requisity Variety, see Introduction to Cybernetics (University Paperbacks)) had been invoked to give the whole discussion a rock solid footing. I also missed a solid link to the burgeoning literature on the P2P movement. It is clear that the issue of property rights in central in making leaderless organisations work (Brafman discusses this as a way to sabotage starfish only) and people like Lawrence Lessig ("Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity) and Yochai Benkler ("The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom") have a lot to say about these issues.

A small point, but a fairly irritating one, is the use of the word "ideology" in the book. The authors ostensibly use this to refer to any set of beliefs that underpin a decentralised organisation. From my point of view, the word "ideology" refers to a more elaborate and closed system of abstract thought (and as such has a pejorative tinge to it). Many starfish (also amongst those mentioned in the book) thrive on a much more vague and fluid set of beliefs, norms and values. It's worthwhile to be more nuanced about this.

Morally speaking, the book leaves the reader in suspension. From an internal point of view, leaderless organisations are unquestionably superior - morally and aesthetically - to centralised organisations, not only because of their structural simplicity and elegance, but also because they rely so openly on trust (in my opinion THE key word in the book), on the belief that man is fundamentally good and ultimately because they are capable of drawing the best from people and providing them with truthfulness, meaning and purpose in their life. Problem is that not only Alcoholics Anonymous operates as a decentralised organisation, but Al Qaeda does too. So starfish can server all kinds of purposes, some more constructive than others. It all depends which side you're on.

It took me some time to warm to this book. Nothing much happens in the initial 80 pages. The first chapter develops two fairly tortuous case studies - the vicissitudes of fortune in the recording industry in the last decade and the struggle of the Apaches against the Spanish invaders - to introduce the theme of the book. Then follows a discussion of the morphology of decentralised organisations (in terms of power distribution, funding, etc). Chapter 3 illustrates these formal characteristics with a series of examples, ranging from Skype over Wikipedia to Burning Man. There is honestly not a lot of meat to chew on in these first chapters and some patience is required from the reader.

It becomes more interesting in Chapter 4 where Brafman and Beckstrom discuss operational principles behind decentralised organisations (the need for pre-existing networks as a substrate, the role of catalysts and champions to activate leaderless organisation, "circles" as their chief co-ordination mechanism, and "ideology" as the glue holding everything more or less together). The role of the catalyst as a "servant leader" (term, however, not used by the authors) is further elaborated in the fifth chapter.

In chapter 6, the discussion turns to the question "What do you do, as an incumbent, when you are under fire from a starfish?" It transpires that there is not an awful lot to be done: you can try to morph them into a spider by activating internal cancer cells (greed and competition), you can try to dissolve or change the glue, the ideology that keeps the structure together or you can join them and become decentralised too (then it's starfish against starfish).

Brafman and Beckstrom maintain that it is not always necessary to go all the way and radically decentralise. There is such thing as a "hybrid" organisation (Chapter 7), which mixes principles of centralisation and decentralisation. Here the discussion suddenly gets denser and this is a part of the book that warrants repeated reading. A distinction is made between centralised organisations that give customers a voice (eBay with its peer-to-peer feedback is an example), those that put their customers to work (IBM developing open source applications) and those that decentralise parts of their internal structure. Towards the end of the chapter, however, the discussion peters out. "Appreciative Enquiry" is invoked as an approach to bring a whiff of decentralisation into companies who want to hang on to their centralised bureaucracies. It's a dangerous example that may tempt people into crass opportunism (that is, however, bound to backfire on them).

Finally, the authors hypothesise that in a given ecosystem there is no static equilibrium in terms of right mix of centralised/decentralised characteristics ("right" in terms of securing survival and the ability to extract economic rent). The "sweet spot" changes as a function of time, sometimes dramatically so. The desire for anonymity and the free flow of information are forces that push towards the decentralisation end, whilst the desire for security and accountability pull the system back to a more centralised mode of operation.

The book closes with a short epilogue that lists 10 simple guiding principles to make the most out of decentralised organisations or to defend yourself from their attacks.

On the whole, I enjoyed this book. It provides an intelligent and accessible discussion of a complex issue. With respect to the latter, the authors do a laudable job in keeping thing simple, but sometimes it's over the top. Particularly in the first halve of the book, their penchant for telling anecdotes and stories makes them err on the side of the trivial (a discussion on Wikipedia starts with "we all remember doing school reports in the sixth grade. Back then, research meant going to the library and hoping the that the Encyclopaedia Brittanica wasn't checked out ... and so on, and so on.) I was irked more than once by the patronising and befuddling prose of Brafman & Beckstrom. Admittedly, sometimes they hit it right. The title of the book, for example, is a very strong and aptly chosen metaphor for decentralised and centralised organisations, respectively.

Also I believe this book does not exhaust the potential of this fascinating subject matter. I think the discussion would have gained significantly in clarity and power if only a number of well known systems science principles (such as Ashby's Law of Requisity Variety, see Introduction to Cybernetics (University Paperbacks)) had been invoked to give the whole discussion a rock solid footing. I also missed a solid link to the burgeoning literature on the P2P movement. It is clear that the issue of property rights in central in making leaderless organisations work (Brafman discusses this as a way to sabotage starfish only) and people like Lawrence Lessig ("Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity) and Yochai Benkler ("The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom") have a lot to say about these issues.

A small point, but a fairly irritating one, is the use of the word "ideology" in the book. The authors ostensibly use this to refer to any set of beliefs that underpin a decentralised organisation. From my point of view, the word "ideology" refers to a more elaborate and closed system of abstract thought (and as such has a pejorative tinge to it). Many starfish (also amongst those mentioned in the book) thrive on a much more vague and fluid set of beliefs, norms and values. It's worthwhile to be more nuanced about this.

Morally speaking, the book leaves the reader in suspension. From an internal point of view, leaderless organisations are unquestionably superior - morally and aesthetically - to centralised organisations, not only because of their structural simplicity and elegance, but also because they rely so openly on trust (in my opinion THE key word in the book), on the belief that man is fundamentally good and ultimately because they are capable of drawing the best from people and providing them with truthfulness, meaning and purpose in their life. Problem is that not only Alcoholics Anonymous operates as a decentralised organisation, but Al Qaeda does too. So starfish can server all kinds of purposes, some more constructive than others. It all depends which side you're on.

Have you wondered why decentralized organizations are growing like wildfire? Starfish and Spider will tell you why. I work in a starfish organization and it is not for the faint-hearted or the one focused on structure and procedure.

This book is an excellent story about centralized, decentralized and hybrid organizations. If you want to kill a spider, cut off its head. You cannot cut off the head of a starfish as it does not have one. If cut off the leg of an starfish, it will grow another.......starfish. This shows how decentralized organizations have always been around and take after the way that our brain's function. Once thought to operate in a hierarchy, latest research shows the opposite. Brafman and Beckstrom are great storytellers and weave the Internet with Al Qadea

This book gives examples of the characteristics of decentralized organizations such as flexibility, shared power and ambiguity and how the Internet has spawned a new generation of decentralized organizations. It is a fascinating book.

Some principles of decentralized organizations;
1. when attacked, they become even more open and decentralized.
2. it is easy to mistake starfish for spiders.
3. an open system doesn't have central intelligence, the intelligence is spread throughout the system.
4. open systems can easily mutate.
5. the decentralized organization sneaks up on you.
6. as industries become decentralized, overall profits decrease.

They stand on 5 legs;
1. Circles
2. the Catalyst
3. Ideology
4. the pre-existing network
5. the Champion

If you want to learn more about community, trust and openness in the 21st century, this is a must read. If you are interested in how organizations like Al Qaeda can thrive with many in the world looking for them, read this book.

This book offers an excellent discussion of the extremely elusive concept of networked type of organizations which social scientists refer to as organizations where decision making power is distributed and whose structure is flat. Such an organization consists of semi-autonomous nodes or cells linked and given cohesion by one or more factors such as kinship, mutual experiences, ethnic culture, or common ideology. In the 21st Century the Global Telecommunications Network (sic) serves as an enabler to networked type of organizations. The book, "Networks and Netwars" (Rand 2001, Amazon.com) provides a formal explanation of networked type of organizations, but will leave many folks still wondering about the anatomy of a networked type of organization.

The book quit effectively uses examples and the analogy of a starfish to both demonstrate and explain how networked type of organizations actually work in practice. This is very important and helpful because such organizations are becoming increasingly more common, but are very difficult for persons used to hierarchical organizations to understand. The book explains for example how the command and control system for al Qaeda cannot be knocked out because it does not exist. More ominously the book notes that as the U.S. increasingly centralizes its efforts against al Qaeda the harder it will be to cope with terrorist operations and threats.

There are now several first rate books available now on networked type of organizations, but this one is probably the best because of the clarity with which it explains what networked type of organizations are and how they really work. It is a shame that the U.S. Intelligence and National Security Communities appear unable to come to grips with geographically dispersed cell of one or more individuals using distributed decision making, and linked by such tenuous ties as personal relationships and shared ideology. This book offers some suggestions for dealing with networked type of organizations, but one is left with the impression that nobody is listening.

If you are looking to start/run an organization whose goal is not to make money, take a look at this book. While the author uses excellent examples, they are not particularly useful when discussing a for-profit company. At the end, the author discusses "hybrid" organizations, revealing the lack of examples of successful for-profit companies that employ the starfish model.

The author also gets a bit repetitive - at times the book reads like an essay about a single simple idea that has been stretched into a full length book.

This excellent book described the difference between centralized and decentralized organizations, the benefits and challenges of both, and offered hybrid possibilities to maximize energies in the 21 century.

The book is well written, filled with stories and examples and easy to translate into a variety of organizations.

The premise of this book is great. It's basically a leadership book which is a genre I've grown to hate with it's flash-in-the-pan theories and "laws". The idea being that organizations become unstoppable when they decentralize because the load gets shared and carried by all instead of a few. There was a lot of Web 2.0 stuff in there with the history of Craigslist, Wikipedia, p2p Sharing, etc. But it really got me thinking about the potential the church could have as a decentralized organization. The overall idea of the book was great. The only negatives being that it still felt like a book on leadership i.e. something that John Maxwell would write. And technically they say the same things over and over again after about 75 pages. But the general idea of decentralizing and p2p sharing and open-source have been influencing me greatly in my thinking on the economy and ecclessiology. Definitely worth a read.

An interesting book on interesting subject.
Decentralization literature is not new, but the author uses a diversified set of examples.
However, most examples used for successful starfish (decentralized) organizations are not profit making companies, such as emule and craigslist.
Still, the book will definitely make you look at organizations and industries in a different way.

Cindy Sheehan is leaving the anti-war movement to which she gave so much life, energy, and focus. She will be back, no doubt, in some form. I wish her well in restoring herself and renewing her own life. But I firmly disagree (and this is a blue-moon moment) with William R. Pitt that "Anyone glad for her departure from activism is celebrating a disaster."

While I doubt I'd use the word "glad" to describe my own feelings, certainly "relieved" qualifies. At any rate, in no way does "disaster" describe this moment. Quite the contrary: this woman endured everything from divorce to death threats to arrest to public taunting and ridicule from the mass media; it is time she retreated and renewed.

There is also a broader theme to this, which I am going to explain with a book review. Yes, a book review. The book is The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations. The authors are Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom, and they have written one of the most crystalline gems of social insight that I have seen in any non-fiction these past 20 years. In a mere 200 pages of text, these two Stanford grads provide more clarity of perspective on our society, its group psychologies and cultural transformations, than you are likely to get from a shelf full of punditry or a year's worth of television. I do not think I am overstating the case for this book: it is the most important and clarion piece of non-fiction to arise in this first decade of the 21st century. It is a book made for, and by, its era.

The metaphor of the title is a comparison of "top-down", hierarchically-structured groups and organizations, such as we are all familiar with in corporate America and government (that's the spider, who can be made lame from the loss of its legs and dead from decapitation); and the fresh wave of decentralized, leaderless, or non-hierarchical organizations that have become such a force in society over the past decade of the Internet (this is the "starfish," which can be chopped up into numerous pieces, each of which will respond by growing a new organism or member).

The book opens with a heady analysis of how a starfish phenomenon evolved in one particular category: the P2P file sharing services in the Napster/Grokster model. The authors show how the early versions of these spontaneous organizations got stuck in "spider" mode, and were therefore eventually trapped and killed by big corporate media and its legal juggernaut. But these Napster-type experiments benefited from such attacks by a response of ever-increasing differentiation, diversification, and "starfish"-style regrowth. Brafman and Beckstrom finally lead the reader to the eMule service, which took decentralization to the point of anonymity and total leaderlessness. Big Media cannot attack an entity like eMule, because it has no head, no governance, no bank accounts: there is nothing for a legal or corporate machine to assault, except for individual users of the service, who, aside from being virtually innumerable, are mostly children and rarely wealthy.

The authors go on to reveal both the beauty and the danger inherent in the starfish-mode of organizational being, drawing examples as diverse as Wikipedia and al Qaeda. Along the way, they present portraits of environmental groups, activist organizations, online merchants, and Internet services. But if this book stopped with mere sketches of eBay, Alcoholics Anonymous, Apache, craigslist, Goodwill Industries, and IBM, then it would be merely an interesting intellectual snack for the MBA crowd.

The Starfish and the Spider becomes a banquet of cultural insight because it digs past the surface that so many pundits and social commentators stop to admire. Brafman and Beckstrom turn the starfish on its back, examine it in varying light, carry it into vastly disparate environments, and constantly ask questions of it. In doing so, they discover some principles and characteristics common to starfish organizations and the people who inspire and influence their growth.

One of their most fascinating discoveries is in the figure of what they term "the catalyst." It is here that we are brought back to Cindy Sheehan (this is my own connection, so if you think it's a stupid association, don't blame the authors of the book). The catalyst is the person who founds a starfish group, the one who gives it form, ideas, value, focus, and meaning. Examples of catalysts that Brafman and Beckstrom offer are:

# Granville Sharp, leader of the abolitionist movement against slavery in England

# Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who founded the women's suffrage movement that Susan B. Anthony later took up with still greater energy

# Craig Newmark of craigslist

# Bill Wilson of AA


One thing the authors point out is that

a catalyst is like the architect of a house: he's essential to the long-term structural integrity, but he doesn't move in. In fact, when the catalyst stays around too long and becomes absorbed in his creation, the whole structure becomes more centralized.



So one common feature to the life and health of a growing decentralized movement or organization is that the catalyst almost always leaves or at least recedes into the mesh of the whole, once the group has matured enough to work autonomously and to withstand assault. Whenever a catalyst attempts to assume a traditional, CEO-type of leadership role, the organization loses its dynamism, its life as a starfish, and becomes a centralized, hierarchical spider--much easier to mark, and then suppress or assimilate.

For a corporate entity, this may not necessarily be a bad thing: growth-as-profit, after all, can be nurtured in a traditional corporate management structure. But growth-as-message can become stilled or silenced when there's a top dog in place, approving this, denying that; or simply being a figurehead in a particular place as the focus of activism or just attention.

The anti-war movement has benefited enormously from Cindy Sheehan's presence, personality, experience, and energy. We have admired her from afar for some two years now: I first wrote about her here (note also that the fractiousness and in-fighting that Sheehan noted in her parting statement existed way back then, too).

Since then, however, the movement has grown, thanks largely to Sheehan's example and leadership. But I agree with Brafman and Beckstrom, that a time inevitably comes for every starfish organization when its formative human force must retreat. In our own democracy's formative stage, George Washington had to decline the crown that his followers attempted to place on his head. Other catalysts have had to spurn a crown or a corner office, and always for the good of the whole, for the sake of the movement's continued growth.

Since Sheehan first camped out in George Bush's backyard, Code Pink, IVAW, and hundreds of other "starfish arms and legs" have formed around her and taken on their own life in the anti-war sea. It is time that these organisms were allowed to share in both the light and the tribulation, the accolades and the calumny.

The blogosphere--itself a starfish organization--has benefited from Sheehan's influence and example. I think she recognizes this as well, and thus chose Daily Kos as the forum for her parting message. It is perhaps only seemingly ironic that the world wide web is perhaps the least "spidery" vehicle of communication on earth today. Only on the Internet, for example, could you find a science writer for a stodgy paper like the New York Times writing a scathing indictment of the Bush administration--it happened today.

As Brafman and Beckstrom point out in their book, this kind of seeming chaos is unique to a starfish-style organization: "When you give people freedom, you get chaos, but you also get incredible creativity." Even on the website of a spider organization like the New York Times.

Clearly, we probably need more chaos; and we certainly need more creativity. Congress has failed to carry out the will of the people, because it cannot respond to the fluid movement of the starfish; it is too mired in its own iron-stranded matrix of excess, corruption, deceit, and self-indulgence. As the authors of The Starfish and the Spider indicate, we can only overcome the turgid inertia of Washington politics by redoubling the starfish energy of the anti-war movement. In other words, it is time for a catalyst to step into the background, so that the whole is given renewed life. And so that a long-suffering and heroic Mom can once more feel the quiet joys of private life that the rest of us so often take for granted.

posted by Brian Donohue @ 5/31/2007

If you underestad the meaning of this book and try to aply to a your work, company or organization...you will be part of the future.

This was a good book; well researched, entertaining and insightful. Brafman's conversational writing style and relevant historical references made this a great weekend read.

This book gives you hope that there is a way to influence change in our society on a small but vast scale. I found the author's examples fascinating and, more importantly replicable. It's a quick read and keeps your attention. It would be a great text for sociology students or organizational behaviorists -- Steve

Every politician,military, business, religious, everyone else should read this book. Understanding the concept of decentralized organizations is necessary to our survival. The subtitle, "the Unstopplable Power of Leaderless Organizations " is misleading as the book does outline how to stop decentralized organizations but also how difficult it is. The authors make it easy to understand this complex type of organization using several examples (why the Apache could defeat the Spanish, the success of AA,al Qaeda,women's right to vote movement,abolitionists,and more).
Once again read the book, get others to read it. Understanding decentralized organizations is necessary to our democratic way of life and success in life and business.

The world is full of successful starfish orgs. The spiders are shriveling away. Learn or become a rel