It's a habit as bad as smoking to read books and not blog about them! So here we go: Linda recommended The Starfish and the Spider, subtitled "The unstoppable power of leaderless organizations." This idea will be familiar to many of us who've been watching open source, wikipedia, and other decentralized online phenomena, but I found that the most interesting parts of this book were about the offline world, and how leaderless organizations have succeeded there.

The authors, Rod Beckstrom and Ori Brafman, start of with a description of the well known Grokster story, and launches into a description of how the Spanish explorers led by Hernando Cortes went to Mexico, to Tenochtitlan, a city of 15 million, and killed Montezuma. Within 2 years, the entire Aztec empire had fallen. Similarly, in Peru, Pizarro captured the Inca leader Atahuallpa, and killed him as well. In two years, the Inca empire was in ruin.

But then, up north, the Spanish encountered the Apaches. The Apaches were different. They had no towns or villages, no roads, no pyramids, no gold. The authors quote Nevins, an Apache historian, who wrote that "By the late seventeenth century, the Spanish had lost effective control of northern Sonora and Chihuahua to the Apaches. The Apaches had successfull wrested control of North Mexico" -- and they continued to keep the Spanish at bay for another two centuries.

In the rest of the book the authors explore Wikipedia, General Electric under Jack Welch, Alcoholics Anonymous and other organizations, and look at how they're started, how they flourish, and look at their various formations, including the hybrid Starfish organization. They give story after story to illustrate their point, and the book is a delight to read.

LINK | 1:06 PM | TB

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