Book Review The Starfish and the Spider

Book Review The Starfish and the Spider Last week I gave a little peak into one of my new favorite books: The Starfish and the Spider The unstoppable power of leaderless organizations. This week Ill wrap it up with some misc. thoughts. I must confess that org stuff bores me to tears. I didnt really care for organizational behavior stuff in undergrad or grad school, and chatting about the various types of org charts seems to be a waste of time. Im sure Im wrong on all of this and Im either too dense to really understand the issues or Im so smart the right answers are just intuitive. Either way, if you told me this was a book about organizational structure I would have changed the channel. But the authors grabbed my attention from the first sentence. And throughout the book they kept my attention (for me, this was one of those cant put it down books) with story after story, example after example. But if you dont have time let me sum the idea up with this: If you lop off a spiders head, it dies. If you lop off a starfish head (um, it doesnt have a head), so if you lop off a starfish arm, it grows back. So to kill it you just cut it in half. Actually, supposedly you will end up with two starfish. Think of how that applies to organizations and companies, and how that plays into competition, growth, etc. The idea is neat, but the examples are sound and very supportive. They talk about how the Spanish army defeated the Mexican colonies and that they tried to destroy the Apache indians but could not. And how this story has too many similarities to MGM trying to destroy Grokster (peer-to-peer music sharing). Did this huge giant destroy P2P sharing? Nope. Does P2P have a head to lop off? No. And this is what the starfish is. Its the Apache indians. Its P2P systems like Grokster, Napster, eMule and more. Its Alcoholics Anonymous. Its al Quaeda and the Burning Man Festival. Its the Internet. Its something that doesnt have a president or physical presence to destroy, which will only follow with the demise of the organization. Its something that gets power from being decentralized. And traditional spider companies dont understand it, and they dont understand how to compete against it. But its pretty real. MGM said the recording industry lost 25% of their revenues because of the P2P threat (page 13). Mergers have happened because of P2P. And because of Skype, which has billions of subscribers (I have my Skype window open right now and have spent about 2 hours on Skype calls today). The authors talk about a hybrid company, with characteristics of spider + starfish. The point to eBay, Craigslist and Amazon.com as examples. Ive watched these companies go from nothing (raise your hand if you remember when Amazon announced they were in the black and compare that with this quarters announced profits!!) to something but didnt think about them in this starfish+spider context. Fascinating. The authors conclude with a list of 10 New Rules to compete in this starfish environment. I would list them except the titles alone dont make sense, and they masterfully draw previous examples back in to support each point. Can starfish organizations be defeated? Yes. The authors give 3 strategies to defeat a well-decentralized organization. And support each strategy with example. So I cant say enough good about this book it is short enough to read in about a day, it is intriguing and full of information, it has excellent suggestions on how to compete with the different organizations, and even proposes the sweet spot that perhaps an org should shoot for. I highly recommend checking it out (but you already figured Id say that). Thanks to Scott Allen for turning me on to it. Book Review The Starfish and the Spider Last week I gave a little peak into one of my new favorite books: The Starfish and the Spider The unstoppable power of leaderless organizations. This week Ill wrap it up with some misc. thoughts. I must confess that org stuff bores me to tears. I didnt really care for organizational behavior stuff in undergrad or grad school, and chatting about the various types of org charts seems to be a waste of time. Im sure Im wrong on all of this and Im either too dense to really understand the issues or Im so smart the right answers are just intuitive. Either way, if you told me this was a book about organizational structure I would have changed the channel. But the authors grabbed my attention from the first sentence. And throughout the book they kept my attention (for me, this was one of those cant put it down books) with story after story, example after example. But if you dont have time let me sum the idea up with this: If you lop off a spiders head, it dies. If you lop off a starfish head (um, it doesnt have a head), so if you lop off a starfish arm, it grows back. So to kill it you just cut it in half. Actually, supposedly you will end up with two starfish. Think of how that applies to organizations and companies, and how that plays into competition, growth, etc. The idea is neat, but the examples are sound and very supportive. They talk about how the Spanish army defeated the Mexican colonies and that they tried to destroy the Apache indians but could not. And how this story has too many similarities to MGM trying to destroy Grokster (peer-to-peer music sharing). Did this huge giant destroy P2P sharing? Nope. Does P2P have a head to lop off? No. And this is what the starfish is. Its the Apache indians. Its P2P systems like Grokster, Napster, eMule and more. Its Alcoholics Anonymous. Its al Quaeda and the Burning Man Festival. Its the Internet. Its something that doesnt have a president or physical presence to destroy, which will only follow with the demise of the organization. Its something that gets power from being decentralized. And traditional spider companies dont understand it, and they dont understand how to compete against it. But its pretty real. MGM said the recording industry lost 25% of their revenues because of the P2P threat (page 13). Mergers have happened because of P2P. And because of Skype, which has billions of subscribers (I have my Skype window open right now and have spent about 2 hours on Skype calls today). The authors talk about a hybrid company, with characteristics of spider + starfish. The point to eBay, Craigslist and Amazon.com as examples. Ive watched these companies go from nothing (raise your hand if you remember when Amazon announced they were in the black and compare that with this quarters announced profits!!) to something but didnt think about them in this starfish+spider context. Fascinating. The authors conclude with a list of 10 New Rules to compete in this starfish environment. I would list them except the titles alone dont make sense, and they masterfully draw previous examples back in to support each point. Can starfish organizations be defeated? Yes. The authors give 3 strategies to defeat a well-decentralized organization. And support each strategy with example. So I cant say enough good about this book it is short enough to read in about a day, it is intriguing and full of information, it has excellent suggestions on how to compete with the different organizations, and even proposes the sweet spot that perhaps an org should shoot for. I highly recommend checking it out (but you already figured Id say that). Thanks to Scott Allen for turning me on to it.