Rod Beckstrom’s The Starfish and the Spider reminded me of his very insightful presentation at the 2007 The Next Web Conference about organizations. Two types will define or break you in a Web2.0 world.
An enjoyable, easy read that further suggests leaderless organizations can fuel dramatic change within organization large and small.
Beckstrom, who just spoke at the 2008 TED conference presents content supporting how organizations can flourish when tightly controlled groups embrace the starfish effect.
He notes how Al-qaeda has embraced this type of leaderless organization and it becomes very obvious to any reader the last five years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This book actually complimented my previous read, The Wisdom of Crowds (review here).
The Starfish and the Spider follows the successful work of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything because both draw upon the power in today’s globalized world to share knowledge — via OpenSource to engage Web2.0 enterprise solutions and corporate blogs to think and more importantly, act independently.
Book website Link