The Starfish and the Spider

The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations

By: Ori Brafman, Rod Beckstrom

Narrated by: Sean Pratt

Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

If you cut off a spider's leg, it's crippled; if you cut off its head, it dies. But if you cut off a starfish's leg, it grows a new one, and the old leg can grow into an entirely new starfish.

What's the hidden power behind the success of Wikipedia, craigslist, and Skype? What do eBay and General Electric have in common with the abolitionist and women's rights movements? What fundamental choice put General Motors and Toyota on vastly different paths? How could winning a Supreme Court case be the biggest mistake MGM could have made?

After five years of ground-breaking research, Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom share some unexpected answers, gripping stories, and a tapestry of unlikely connections. The Starfish and the Spider argues that organizations fall into two categories: traditional "spiders", which have a rigid hierarchy and top-down leadership, and revolutionary "starfish", which rely on the power of peer relationships.

The Starfish and the Spider explores what happens when starfish take on spiders (such as the music industry vs. Napster, Kazaa, and the P2P services that followed). It reveals how established companies and institutions, from IBM to Intuit to the U.S. government, are also learning how to incorporate starfish principles to achieve success. This audiobook explores:

• How the Apaches fended off the powerful Spanish army for 200 years
• The power of a simple circle
• The importance of catalysts who have an uncanny ability to bring people together
• How the Internet has become a breeding ground for leaderless organizations
• How Alcoholics Anonymous has reached untold millions with only a shared ideology and without a leader

The Starfish and the Spider is that rare book that will change how you understand the world around you.

©2006 Decentralized Revolutions, LLC (P)2007 Gildan Media Corp

great tool

very informative and set me on the right path for searching to be hey catalyst

Getting outdated

Time to update it with examples and lessons from the past decade. The book is relevant up to the year it was published.

Decentralization before Blockchain

Great perspective on the advantages/disadvantages of centeralied and decentralized organizations. Book was written pre-Blockchain crave. The author does a great job of diving into the foundation of decentralization

Teaches you how to be a future leader.

This book teaches you how to be a future leader. Times are changing and so does our leadership style also need to change.

Excellent Read on Organizational Structure

Would you listen to The Starfish and the Spider again? Why?

Fantastic insights into how the organizational structure of companies affects overall performance and results. Flush with detailed real world examples and case studies. Must read for founders, managers and anyone interested in organizational structure and behavior.

Top read for leaders

the insights of this book help leaders to understand where the limitations of centralized organizations can be overcome by promoting and designing decentralized structure and knit the two together into a hybrid juggernaut organization.

Powerful perspective, with implementation issues

Distinguishing between two types of organizational ideologies that both tend to exist in our blind spot was illuminating. Why impossible organizations like al Qaeda even exist, let alone thrive, is a fascinating look at the silent impact of our cultural way of working.

That said, where is the road map and workbook to roll up our collective sleeves and go to work on generating a similarly fantastic result? The rules are more like guidelines to point readers toward accidental results like creating eBay.

Good points but slightly dated and doesn’t o deep enough

The examples in the book are slightly dated, then again this is not the authors fault as it was written in 2006. some of the more interesting tidbits were on the apaches. The lesser ones were case studies used as infinitum on Kazaa, Napster and Wikipedia.

Overall an interesting but dated read, as I write this at the end of 2018 reading this book has a reduced ROI compared to when it came out. Given its publishing date it doesn’t address more recent innovations in decentralization such as bitcoin/cryptocurrencies at all which is a pitty. The authors should consider publishing a revised edition or a follow up.

Every Leader Should Read This Book

Very thought provoking. As a Marine leader, this book caused me to look at our current national security threats in a completely different way and think differently about the way we tackle these threats.

interesting idea

but it could have been fleshed out a little more thoroughly, like methods and tips to implement the hybrid organization.