The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations

by Ori Brafman (Goodreads author), Rod A. Beckstrom
The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
book data
234 ratings, 3.75 average rating, 70 reviews (more data...)
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published
October 5th 2006 by Portfolio Hardcover

binding
Hardcover, 240 pages

isbn
1591841437    (isbn13: 9781591841432)

description
Understanding the amazing force that links some of today's most successful companies

If you cut off a spider's leg, it's crippled; if you cut off its...more




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G Stephen
08/30/07
fbuser533314146 rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in June, 2007
A Summary -

The Starfish and the Spider—the unstoppable power of leaderless organizations by Ori Brafman and Rod A Beckstrom

If you want to know about organizations like YWAM, read this book.

This book is an excellent story about centralized, decentralized and hybrid organizations. If you want to kill a spider, cut off its head. You cannot cut off the head of a starfish as it does not have one. If cut off the leg of an starfish, it will grow another.......sta...more
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Nicholas
06/22/09
Nicholas rated it: 4 of 5 stars

bookshelves: business, internet, war-theory
Read in May, 2009
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
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Presbygrow
06/02/09
Presbygrow added it

bookshelves: transformation
Reviewed by Craig Williams

The overleaf of this book says, “If you cut off a spider’s head, it dies; but if you cut off a starfish’s leg, it grows a new one, and that leg can grow into an entirely new starfish. Traditional top-down organizations are like spiders, but now starfish organizations are changing the face of business and the world.”

A friend of mine observes in a dissertation that church organization often follows the organizational structures of the preva...more
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Sarah Hanawald
04/12/09
Sarah Hanawald rated it: 2 of 5 stars

Read in January, 2006
I read this book a while ago, but a recent conversation caused me to revisit it. It's a pretty interesting read, but doesn't, to my mind, provide any major insights. It is true that de-centralized organizations are really hard to topple. The authors make this point again and again, coming back repeatedly to Napster and online file sharing as their prime example.

The thing is, that all the successful organizations they profile started with pretty low stakes. How many kids came up wit...more
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Nick
07/16/07
Nick rated it: 4 of 5 stars

bookshelves: own-the-hard-copy
Read in March, 2007
This is a good book to recommend to people who are not familiar with the idea of "community and conversation over command and control." If you are at all familiar with this concept, why/how open source communities work, and why the war on terror or the war on drugs are destine to fail, you could probably write this book yourself. Nonetheless, a good collection of anecdotes.
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Nathan Smith
11/03/08
Nathan Smith rated it: 5 of 5 stars

bookshelves: currently-reading
This is a great book that would go well with "Good to Great." It allows us to see the obvious nature of how organizations form and why they form and how that effects what they organize themselves to do.
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Kelly
01/19/09
Kelly rated it: 2 of 5 stars

bookshelves: nonfiction
Read in May, 2008
Mildly interesting. It's been compared to The Tipping Point, but I didn't have any big "aha" moments like I did with The Tipping Point. They gave lots of examples of successful decentralized organizations. And they did try to summarize the qualities those successful groups had. But that part was pretty short--I wanted more of that. I didn't get a lot out of the book that I feel like I can apply in real life. Whereas The Tipping Point helped me to start making connections about how to c...more
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Stan Rieb
02/25/09
Stan Rieb rated it: 5 of 5 stars

Read in January, 2009
Great book for understanding the power of networking in the current culture. Huge implications to the church, although this is not a book about the church. As my friend Warren Johnson often reminds me - All truth is God;s truth. My take away from this book:
The Head of the Church - Jesus Christ was killed yet he lives eternally, thus the church is now a Starfish organization.
The church invest in Spider organization commodities - buildings, pastor, programs and yet the church thrives b...more
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Darren Corpe
04/19/09
Darren Corpe rated it: 5 of 5 stars

Read in April, 2009
This book clarified a lot of ideas and inspired me to believe in the vast potential to do good. It is the missing link that clarifies an unusual concept of good and evil. That is, the fight for diversity from the good, and the fight for the destruction of diversity from the evil. This book is a summary of practical examples of this age old conflict of good vs. evil. From the success of the internet, to the Apache Indians, to the US constitution, and Toyota car manufacturers to name a few. G...more
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Annie
10/08/08
Annie rated it: 5 of 5 stars

Read in September, 2008
recommends it for: the anonymous, those who are skeptical about anarchy
OMG, I cannot get over this book!

I just started an awesome new job which affords me two days a week of reading for pleasure at work! Unbelievable, no? It is truly the greatest. (The other two days I work, I spend all of my time on my feet caring for AWESOME animals!)

This book was one of the first I read for pleasure at work, and man, what a great idea! It doesn't sound like it would necessarily be pleasure reading, but it most definitely was for me. It is about the differ...more
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Davis
01/13/09
Davis rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in December, 2008
An interesting and enlightening book, analyzing centralized and decentralized organizations. Most of the ideas are common sense. However, the real value is in the analysis of the examples provided in the book. From a historical perspective, you see how the ideas impact society and business. This book definitely provides a valuable perspective for the investor or businessman.
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Sean O'steen
04/22/09
Sean O'steen rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in January, 2008
A great primer for social web, social media, & grass-roots movements. This book provides a framework to compare and contrast the organizational structures of just about any community you may belong to. Starfish organizations are everywhere and this book empowers you to identify them and to participate in any one of the described roles.
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Abhi Sharma
07/27/08
Abhi Sharma rated it: 5 of 5 stars

I have to admit, one of the better books on management that I have read recently. I think we in marketing spend way too much time on learning the impact of new brands on the market and not enough time on how those were created in the first place.

My learning from this book is simple; it's imperative that we understand the environment in which powerful brands are created. This book purports the idea of de-centralization; an environment necessary for creative development of any kind. I...more
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Lynn
04/22/09
Lynn rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in April, 2009
Good book... covers the concepts well with many real life examples. My only complaint is that is almost over explains the concepts to the point you want to skip ahead... "Yes I get it... cutting off a spider's head kills it". Still a very worthwhile read... good for a christmas present for your boss.
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Martin Spriggs
04/08/09
Martin Spriggs rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in May, 2008
Ori writes an incredibly insightful book on organizations. He challenges conventional corporate "wisdom" about how to build, manage and lead a successful organization. I have to read it again to get even more good stuff out of it. He just makes sense!
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Anita
10/19/08
Anita rated it: 3 of 5 stars

bookshelves: business
Read in October, 2008
recommended to Anita by: Claudia
This is a business book about decentralized organizations - Nabster, terrorist cells, Apache software, Wikipedia, AA, and many others. I'm sure it was a great book when it was written in 2005, but in 2008, it sounds outdated. Decentralized organizations are changing constantly, so the author's obsession with Nabster and its reincarnates seems outdated - Itunes is barely mentioned, but its become much more relevant than Nabster wanna-bes. The principles in the book are interesting, though, if you...more
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JudyB
04/07/09
JudyB rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in April, 2009
I am not actually reading this book - but listening to it on cd while driving to and from work.

It is a must read - good thinking about centralized vs de-centralized leadership organizations.
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Samson Blackwell
09/12/08
Samson Blackwell rated it: 2 of 5 stars

bookshelves: non-fiction
Read in September, 2008
While there are parts of this book that make me think, much of it is overly simplistic and repetitive.

Overall, their implicit definitions of "starfish" and "spider" are so loose virtually any group could fall into one or the other, which creates not only a false dichotomy but essentially makes the working terms meaningless. They try to patch this up by repeating themselves a lot and creating a third term, "hybrid," to explain everything in-between the ot...more
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Jennifer
04/12/08
Jennifer rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in June, 2008
A tremendously valuable book for anyone who cares about turning an idea into a reality, even into a movement.

* Allow and indeed help others to act (it's not about you).
* You can have a greater influence by letting others take your idea and run with it than you can by owning and controling.
* Build and be active in networks.
* Don't make a willingness to act contingent on controlling or precisely measuring the outcome.
* Enable creativity; don't squash budding ide...more
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Mark Atwood
06/04/09
Mark Atwood added it

The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman (2006)
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