The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
2011; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 93; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2163-6214
Autores ResumoThe Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations. By Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom. London: Penguin Books, 2006. 240 pp. $15.00 (paper). The Starfish and the Spider is a fascinating and popular read. And in a time when the membership of many mainline denominations in America (other than Roman Catholic) adds up to fewer than the number of people who believe that they themselves have been abducted by aliens (6 million), Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom have written a book that has tremendous implications for an audience that I'm sure will be surprising to them: the church. Beckstrom and Brafman chronicle the development of the decentralized revolution and draw upon a variety of illustrations ranging from Napster to the Apaches. Their central argument is as follows; centralized leadership structures are very similar to spiders. Cut off a leg and the spider can still function; cut off another leg, the spider can still function. But should there be a blow delivered to the head of the spider, the spider dies. Without the central command structure there is no life or future for the spider. In contrast with the spider is the starfish: cut off a leg of the starfish, not only can it still function, but it will regenerate another leg. At first glance, a starfish and a spider are similar in appearance. Like the spider, the starfish has multiple legs sprouting from a central body. But that's where the similarities end. Quoting the authors, With a spider, what you see is pretty much what you get. A body's a body, a head's a head, and a leg's a leg. But starfish are very 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, you'll be in for a surprise: the animal won't die, and pretty soon you'll have two starfish to deal with. . . . They can achieve this magical regeneration because in reality a starfish is a neural network - all of the neural information necessary for a starfish to be a starfish is present in every cell (p. 35). Living in a world of spiders, it's hard for us to understand the starfish approach to life. But understand it we must, because the decentralized revolution - from eDonkey to al Qaeda - is having a significant impact on the world. Regarding al Qaeda and terrorism, a centralized approach to defeating them - killing significant leaders - not only has not been effective in quelling their march of terror, but instead has helped them flourish in recruiting. …
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