Book review: The Starfish and the Spider

Author: Ori Brafman, Rod Beckstrom
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
Publication date: October 5, 2006
http://www.starfishandspider.com/

Intelligent people can and should disagree. So when we read The Starfish and the Spider, it’s no surprise that we had varied opinions. And when it was time to publish a review, no one could quite agree on which review we should publish. In the spirit of intelligent discourse, here are two reviews of the same book.

Jeff says: “Fantastic.”

by Jeff Mackanic

Have you ever tried to explain an open source organization to your parents (or grandparents) and received the polite nodding head that signifies they think you are crazy? Have you been trying to get your company to engage with open source? If so, then this is a book you will find very helpful.

I now have a new way to describe the organizational structure of open source. One of the most successful organizations of the last 50 years is Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Most everyone has a very favorable impression of this organization, which has helped millions of people.

One reason for its success is how it is structured: It is very decentralized. Who is the president of AA? How many AA members are there? Who owns AA? Can you stop AA?

Would anyone want to change the organizational structure of AA? Probably not. AA and open source are examples of decentralized systems that are having a tremendous impact. Like AA, open source does not have a president, there are no dues, and everyone can be a leader. Open source, too, has a decentralized organizational structure.

A starfish, growing

The book begins with a comparison between a spider and a starfish. At first glance, a spider and a starfish may look similar. A spider has a body, a head, and many legs. But if you cut off the head of a spider it dies. The spider represents a centralized organization (a closed system). In a centralized organization, if the leader is killed the organization will fall apart.

A starfish, on the other hand, has many legs but does not have a head. A starfish is a neural network. You can not cut off the head of a starfish. If you cut a starfish in half, you will end up with two starfish. The starfish is the model of a decentralized organization (an open system).

The book then compares and contrasts centralized organizations and decentralized organizations. This discussion seems timely, with the Internet serving as a great facilitator of decentralized organizations. With the growth of the Internet, the rules are changing. Decentralized organizations are a much larger force than they were 10 years ago. Open source is a leading example of a decentralized organization.

The book describes the six principles of a decentralized organization and provides examples of how decentralized organizations are transforming major industries. The existing centralized music labels have been greatly challenged by the decentralized (starfish) organizations, starting with Napster. The ability to download and share music freely has significantly impacted the music label revenues. As the music labels attempt to eliminate these decentralized groups, new ones emerge. Shut down Napster, and Kazaa is created. It’s hard to kill a starfish.

And there are other decentralized disrupters: Skype disrupting AT&T, Craigslist disrupting newspaper advertising, and Apache software disrupting Microsoft and Netscape.

According to the authors, there are also hybrid organizations, which are a mix of spider and starfish. For example, eBay is a centralized company that decentralizes the customer experience. The decentralization of user ratings has turned out to be a competitive advantage.

The other type of hybrid is a centralized company that decentralizes internal parts of their business. General Electric is an example of this model. At General Electric, each business unit has to perform as a stand-alone business. This increases the accountability at each individual business unit.

There is a very interesting discussion about IBM and Sun, who the authors believe have moved toward open source (a decentralized model) in order to remain competitive. But one of the main tenets of a decentralized system is that ideology is the fuel that drives the decentralized organization. In order for IBM and Sun to move toward an open source model it has to be more than a business decision. It needs to be a significant change in ideology to be effective.

The book concludes with a section devoted to the mythological sweet spot–“The decentralized sweet spot is the point along the centralized continuum that yields the best competitive position.” The idea is that as industries change, a business needs to continually adjust the balance between centralized and decentralized structures. Apple appears to be on the sweet spot today for music. But the sweet spot will change. And when it does who will be best positioned to grow?

Although The Starfish and the Spider is an easy read, it is quite thought provoking. Here are a couple quick take aways.

1. If you want more innovation and creativity in your organization, move toward a starfish.
2. Always be on the look out for a starfish – these organizations can grow exponentially.
3. To empower individuals be more like a starfish.

And there’s a helpful guide. How do you know if you are dealing with a starfish organization? The authors present some questions:

1. Is there a person in charge?
2. Are there headquarters?
3. If you thump it on the head, will it die?
4. Is there a clear division of roles?
5. If you take out a unit, is the organization harmed?
6. Are knowledge and power concentrated or distributed?
7. Is the organization flexible or rigid?
8. Can you count the employees or participants?
9. Are working groups funded by the organization, or are they self-funding?
10. Do working groups communicate directly or through intermediaries?

Greg says: “Meh.”

by Greg DeKoenigsberg

Seems like a lot of people are writing books these days about the power of collaboration. Chances are, if you’re reading this review, you’re already one of the people who “gets” the power of decentralized collaboration. You are almost certainly an enthusiastic user of open source software. Maybe you’ve worked a mailing list for information, or filed the occasional bug in some instance of Bugzilla somewhere. Maybe you’ve even submitted a patch or two to your favorite open source project. Or maybe you’re more of a wiki person, and you spend your days combing your favorite wikis for inaccuracies or typos.

The again, maybe you don’t do any of these things. Even so, it’s likely that you understand, at a gut level, the immense power of online communities.

For that reason, some of the insights in The Starfish and the Spider may not strike you as particularly… well, insightful. But then again, you probably aren’t the target audience.

The Starfish and the Spider is definitely one of those books. Read the dust jacket and see the breathless comparisons to Blink and The Wisdom of Crowds and The Tipping Point: those other books full of observations that seem revolutionary to some, but obvious to others.

Okay, so it’s not revolutionary. But it’s still worth a read, especially for those in the target demographic — Makers of Important Decisions — who are trying to understand how online communities work. This book is clearly a primer for these people, and a good one. For the more clueful, it may provide some useful metaphors for discussing the philosophies of open source with the less clueful.

The Good.

The last chapter, “The New World,” gives ten “rules of the game” for survival in a world of decentralized collaboration. They’re good rules, too, suitable for framing and posting around the budding Web 2.0 workplace. (And no, I’m not going to tell you what the rules are. Go buy the book. If you’re cheap, go get it from the library. If you know where to find one, that is.)

When my family asks me what I do for a living, I tend to ramble. Now I can just hand them this book and tell them to read the chapter about catalysts.

The Bad.

The whole spider/starfish metaphor seems awfully forced at times. The spider is meant to represent top-down hierarchy. The starfish is meant to represent decentralization. One chapter, entitled “Standing on Five Legs”, proposes that all decentralized organizations have five guiding principles — or “stand on five legs”. Except that sea stars don’t have legs. They have arms. And they don’t stand on them, really. Is this too picky? Maybe.

The Ugly.

The quotes on the dust jacket. I inherently distrust any jacket blurb that claims, “you’ll never see the world the same way again.” But then again, the book probably wouldn’t sell half as well with a blurb like this:

“It’s pretty good, even if it is twice as long as it needs to be. But your boss will read it, so you should probably read it too. I guess.”

This entry was posted by The editorial team on Monday, February 5th, 2007 at 10:55 am and is filed under review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.