Starfish and Spider

The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations. Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom. Penguin Portfolio, 2006.

URL = http://www.starfishandspider.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Book about leaderless organizations.

Description

From the publisher's wiki at http://www.starfishandspider.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

"One thing that business, institutions, governments and key individuals will have to realize is spiders and starfish may look alike, but starfish have a miraculous quality to them. Cut off the leg of a spider, and you have a seven-legged creature on your hands; cut off its head and you have a dead spider. But cut off the arm of a starfish and it will grow a new one. Not only that, but the severed arm can grow an entirely new body. Starfish can achieve this feat because, unlike spiders, they are decentralized; every major organ is replicated across each arm.

But starfish don’t just exist in the animal kingdom. Starfish organizations are taking society and the business world by storm, and are changing the rules of strategy and competition. Like starfish in the sea, starfish organizations are organized on very different principles than we are used to seeing in traditional organizations. Spider organizations are centralized and have clear organs and structure. You know who is in charge. You see them coming.

Starfish organizations, on the other hand, are based on completely different principles. They tend to organize around a shared ideology or a simple platform for communicaton- around ideologies like al Qaeda or Alcoholics Anonymous. They arise rapidly around the simplest ideas or platforms. Ideas or platforms that can be easily duplicated. Once they arrive they can be massively disruptive and are here to stay, for good or bad. And the Internet can help them flourish.

So in today’s world starfish are starting to gain the upper hand.

How can Toyota leverage starfish principles to crush their spider-like rivals, GM and Ford. How did tiny Napster cripple the global music industry Why is free, community based Wikipedia crushing Encyclopedia Britannica overnight? Why is tiny Craigslist crippling the global newspaper industry Why is Al Quaeda flourishing and even growing stronger. In today’s world to answer this it is essential to understand the potential strength of a starfish organization.

The Starfish and the Spider by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom, explores the phenomenal and unstoppable new power of the starfish organizations and will change the way you look at the world." (http://www.starfishandspider.com/index.php?title=Main_Page)

Review

"If you lop off a spider’s head, it dies. If you lop off a starfish head (um, it doesn’t have a head…), so if you lop off a starfish arm, it grows back. So to kill it you just cut it in half. Actually, supposedly you will end up with two starfish. Think of how that applies to organizations and companies, and how that plays into competition, growth, etc.

The idea is neat, but the examples are sound - and very supportive. They talk about how the Spanish army defeated the Mexican colonies… and that they tried to destroy the Apache indians but could not. And how this story has too many similarities to MGM trying to destroy Grokster (peer-to-peer music sharing). Did this huge giant destroy P2P sharing? Nope. Does P2P have a “head” to lop off? No.

And this is what the starfish is. It’s the Apache indians. It’s P2P systems like Grokster, Napster, eMule and more. It’s Alcoholics Anonymous. It’s al Quaeda and the Burning Man Festival. It’s the Internet. It’s something that doesn’t have a president or physical presence to destroy, which will only follow with the demise of the organization. It’s something that gets power from being decentralized." (http://www.jibberjobber.com/blog/archives/577)

Discussion

8 Principles of Decentralization

Patrick Phillipe Meier:

"The Starfish and the Spider is about “what happens when there’s no one in charge. It’s about what happens when there’s no hierarchy. You’d think there would be disorder, even chaos. But in many arenas, a lack of traditional leadership is giving rise to powerful groups that are turning industry and society upside down.” The book draws on a series of case studies that illustrate 8 Principles of Decentralization. I include these below with short examples.

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

Not only did the Apaches survive the Spanish attacks, but amazingly, the attacks served to make them even stronger. When the Spanish attacked them, the Apaches became even more decentralized and even more difficult to conquer (21).

2. It’s easy to mistake starfish for spiders:

When we first encounter a collection of file-swapping teenagers, or a native tribe in the Arizona desert, their power is easy to overlook. We need an entirely different set of tools in order to understand them (36).

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

It’s not that open systems necessarily make better systems. It’s just that they’re able to respond more quickly because each member has access to knowledge and the ability to make direct use of it (39).

4. Open systems can easily mutate:

The Apaches did not—and could not—plan ahead about how to deal with the European invaders, but once the Spanish showed up, Apache society easily mutated. They went from living in villages to being nomads. The decision didn’t have to be approved by headquarters (40).

5. The decentralized organization sneaks up on you:

For a century, the recording industry was owned by a handful of corporations, and then a bunch of hackers altered the face of the industry. We’ll see this pattern repeat itself across different sectors and in different industries (41).

6. As industries become decentralized, overall profits decrease:

The combined revenues of the remaining four [music industry giants] were 25 percent less than they had been in 2001. Where did the revenues go? Not to P2P players [Napster]. The revenue disappeared (50).

7. Put people into an open system and they’ll automatically want to contribute:

People take great care in making the articles objective, accurate, and easy to understand [on Wikipedia] (74).

8. When attacked, centralized organizations tend to become even more centralized:

As we saw in the case of the Apaches and the P2P players, when attacked decentralized organizations become even more decentralized (139)." (http://irevolution.wordpress.com/2010/01/09/starfish-spider-decentralization/)