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| The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations | 
 enlarge | Authors: Ori Brafman, Rod A. Beckstrom
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $10.20
You Save: $14.75 (59%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  65 reviews
Sales Rank: 7717
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 5.8 x 1
ISBN: 1591841437
Dewey Decimal Number: 302.35
EAN: 9781591841432
ASIN: 1591841437
Publication Date: October 5, 2006
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| Customer Reviews:
 Little more than a white paper April 5, 2007
10 out of 15 found this review helpful
I thought the subject matter of the book was timely, important and accurate. I enjoyed the thoroughness of the analysis and comparisons of leaderless versus typical organizations. However, that's where the book really ends. There's no real actionable data for leaders to take back to their companies, only the argument of what they are up against.
I would love to read a Part 2 to this book that completes the cycle. That is, how modern companies can utilize these patterns to their advantage to grow in the market place. I think there are extremely valid applications of this. One example that stands out is Salesforce and AppExchange.
By developing Apex and adding a marketplace (AppExchange) for third party development, Salesforce is expanding its footprint and innovating through organizations they may never have previously had a relationship with.
 Decent ideas but repetitive July 24, 2007
9 out of 12 found this review helpful
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.
 The Starfish and the Spider ... Yes! October 16, 2006
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I have a childhood memory of building a go-cart. Every kid in the neighborhood was involved. Who was in charge? Whoever had the right answer in the moment of the next right thing to do. Hands, hearts, minds worked together, one idea building on another. It was an emergent experience in every sense of the word. The go-cart was more beautiful and functional than any one of us could have built alone.
Before beginning to read The Starfish and the Spider, recall your own memories of magical groups in self organizing action. Whether you are a teacher, community leader, business owner, NGO officer, or corporate executive, this is a book worth reading.
This is a book about the power and magic of groups engaged in self-organizing, non-hierarchical projects. Using stories of business, politics, activism and common interest groups, the authors show how such groups coalesce, grow and effect change, often in the face of tremendous "conventional" opposition. Some of the examples include Wikipedia, eBay, Skype, Napster and P2P sharing, al Qaeda, and many open source and decentralized projects which are ... starfish like.
From the book: "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. ...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 the spider, the starfish functions as a decentralized network..."
For me, one message of this book is that this "new" form of leadership does not need to be learned. Rather, it is a matter of unlearning our cultural training that a hierarchical organization is required to accomplish anything of importance. Once you understand the dynamics that authors Ori Braufman and Rod Beckstrom identify, you will begin to notice starfish-like organizations springing forth in many remarkable places.
The authors tell the story of Dave Garrison's (CEO of Netcom, 1995) attempt to engage French venture capitalists in investing in Netcom. Trying to understand his business model, the investors wanted to know, "Who is the President of the Internet?" "Who decides?" They could not grasp that the Internet had many contributors and no central leadership. It went against everything taught in the best business schools. Thus, the French investors declined to invest, and lost an incredible opportunity.
There is no question that there are stresses within starfish organizations. A go-cart is a short-lived project; a new business is in it for the long term. The games can be intense and the tactical agreements fluid. But common interests and shared objectives enable people to undertake the initial creative act of letting go, and learning to trust each other. With that, the locus of power and control shifts, and the results challenge everything we have been taught in our schools, MBA and management courses.
Throughout the book the authors illustrate and compare many aspects of both hierarchical "spider" organizations and leaderless "starfish" organizations. Simple graphs, role definitions and lists make it easier to see and feel the difference between these two ways of organizing.
This book is aimed at the business management market, but I believe it is worth serious study in universities and even elementary schools where principles of management and human relations are taught. Many aspects of starfish-like behavior are counter-intuitive to what we have learned in our schools, not only about how companies work but about how anything is accomplished.
For existing "spider" enterprises, it may be a challenge to embrace the starfish principles as a means to improve performance. As a spider cannot simply decide to change the design of its neural network and decentralize, neither can a top-down, centrally controlled organization or school. But in promoting and training the concepts of group genius in big corporations, I have seen the successes of "experimental" projects create a ripple effect on the entire corporate culture. Over time, even the most conventional firm can reframe its thinking and work towards the unstoppable engagement, commitment and achievement that can be found in leaderless organizations. This book promises that we will see more of it in the near and distant future.
The Starfish and the Spider is a celebration of the power of human beings taking their destiny into their own hands, and a welcome break from the artificial, mechanical-like treatment of human attributes that has saturated "management" theories based on hierarchal organization. Beyond describing a much more natural way of employing human talents, this book is particularly noteworthy because it is about the success and achievement of starfish in a world that seems to be dominated by spider organizations.
Enjoy the book, study the stories, use Brafman's and Beckstrom's "Five legs of the Starfish" as design parameters for your organizations, your work and your life. Though arguably as old as the tribal way of life, this way of organizing is still young in terms of formal research and mainstream attention. There is much room to mature the concepts and to become part of the ongoing emergence that is clearly being powered by the capacity of Web and wireless communications to link us all together. Enjoy the journey. It can be wonderful, rewarding, long-term child's play!
Gail Taylor, Tomorrow Makers, Inc.
Outstanding and Thought Provoking December 27, 2006
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is an exceptional book addressing how decentralized organizations flourish. It is easy to read, yet stimulates exploratory thinking beyond its words. The suggestions in the Starfish and the Spider can impact society on the grand scale from fighting terrorism worldwide to defeating alcoholism. As a university professor, I read many business books. This is one of the best. I have recommended it to my graduate students, and they have unanimously agreed it is great.
Not quite right March 19, 2007
6 out of 12 found this review helpful
There's some interesting anecdotes in the book. The anecdotes seem good, but when it came to the conclusion of the book, and things that I actually know about, it threw everything into doubt.
From P194: "When you download a song from eMule, you just never know- it could be fine, or it could contain a malicious virus."
This is total nonsense. Songs are data, they should not contain any executable code, and therefore it's impossible for them to contain virii.
From P200: "... The Maginot Line might have worked well in World War I, but twenty-two years later it was no match for the German army and its new weapons. The expensive, old-fashioned trench system was useless. Technology had changed the rules of warefare, and within a number of weeks the Germans had full control of France."
So this is true, but they don't mention why it's true. It's true not because the technology was bad, but because the Germans went around it.
[...]
The topics of the book are interesting, but it seems like the authors play fast-and-loose with their interpretations, instead of sticking to providing the reader with as much unbiased information as possible.
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