The starfish and the spider

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Very interesting! This reminded me of the book "The Starfish and the Spider" where it discusses the power of leaderless organizations and how they can be better in certain instances. Something interesting from the book is that these centralized groups become more and more centralized when they are attacked but the decentralized groups become more and more decentralized. An example would be the RIAA vs Napster. Napster was replaced by more and more decentralized networks while the RIAA started asserting more and more control.

I assume most people here have at least heard of The Starfish and the Spider, but I'd also like to put in a word for his two Braintickers books. The first is a book of questions for the year 3,000, like "When we can match or exceed many or all human physical and mental skills with computers or appliances, how will we define our reason for being?" The second is a book of questions for CEOs. I think one of the best ways to measure the intelligence of a person is by the questions they ask, so I'm really glad to see Rod get the post.

…ctics. The following books helped me a lot in that respective, and more: 1. Positioning, 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing/Branding, Focus, Marketing Warfare 2. Purple Cow, All Marketers are Liars, Permission Marketing (I didn't like "The Big Moo", "Free prize inside" or "Small is the new Big"). 3. Founters At Work 4. Wikinomics, Wisdom of Crowds, The Tipping Point (Blink! was alright). I am looking forward to reading "The Long Tail" and "The starfish and the spider"...has anyone read them yet? 6. Why We Buy 7. Hackers and Painters 8. The E-Myth revisited 9. The Art of the Start 10. On War, The Art of War by Machiavelli and Sun Tzu (not exactly for startups, but definitely useful) 11. Crossing the Chasm