The Starfish and the Spider

A few months ago I ran across Rod Beckstrom’s website (www.beckstrom.com), which is mainly about his new book, The Starfish and the Spider. I was fascinated by the concept and found his video on the site very entertaining, so I got the book and read it with interest.

The core principle contrasts “spider” organizations with “starfish” organizations. Turns out that spiders are very centralized, rather like humans. Cut off their heads and they die. In contrast, starfish are decentralized creatures. Sever a leg, and another one grows back. Remove all the legs, and remarkably, each one can grow a new starfish. All the biological information and equipment required for the starfish exists in each leg. Well, you see where this is going. Traditional companies are like spiders, with a CEO running a top-down organization. Command and control, maybe sprinkled with a little distributed autonomy. But a new type of organization is beginning to emerge, stimulated largely by the existing internet network, that are more like the starfish.

Alcoholics Anonymous is a starfish organization. No one controls it. You can start a chapter wherever you want. Napster was a starfish organization, as are virtually all P2P file-sharing services. Maybe the ultimate starfish is the Internet. (Beckstrom tells a great story from the mid-90’s when some French investors asked an ISP CEO who was the president of the Internet, and couldn’t fathom the idea that no one controlled it.) It’s power to the people. These organizations are very difficult to kill. Cut off a limb, and another grows back. And there are also, quite appropriately, hybrid organizations—part starfish and part spider. Ebay is one of these. The payment structure is all spider, with a centralized PayPal service for your protection. But the network of buyers and sellers, policed by member ratings, is very much starfish.

Beckstrom points out great benefits to decentralized organizations, including something of a moral charge. If you’re a fan of democracies, then relinquishing control to members has something more than a practical appeal—it seems romantically idealistic. The Starfish and The Spider is the kind of book that stimulates your thinking, and after reading it I had all manner of visions and ideas floating around in my head. And I’ll never look at starfish the same way again.