Leaderless: The asymmetrical bootstrapping starfish and the chronically arthritic spider.
Fri, February 9, 2007 at 10:47 PM in Business Models, Disruptive Technology, Social Networking, Wisdom of Crowds As a companion philosophy to The Wisdom of Crowds we now have The Starfish And The Spider; the unstoppable power of leaderless organizations.
Of course guerrilla armies have been using asymmetrical warfare since Moses unleashed boils and other nasty ailments on Pharaoh. All organizations have a problem when dealing with something that operates as effectively as a virus if you ever seen John Carpenters "The Thing". Of course if it really is 'unstoppable power' that leaderless organizations have, it's not going to be stopped. (See Distributed Intelligence & Collective Intelligence)
Evidently, the U.S. military is studying small companies to unearth ideas that will help the war on terror.
It may seem a stretch that within the chaos of capitalism are the secrets to fighting al-Qaeda. But the military and business have long borrowed leadership lessons and competitive tactics from each other...
...How large, traditional companies fare in this fight may prove invaluable in developing a strategy against al-Qaeda. That's why the military is going to school. A book making the rounds at the Pentagon is The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations. It was written for a business audience, but military strategists are saying, "This is the best thing I've read that applies to counterterrorism," says Lt. Col. Rudolph Atallah, a Defense Department director in international affairs.
Via Catrina.net: Leaderless Startups, The Starfish and the Spider.
Linda recommended The Starfish and the Spider
, subtitled "The unstoppable power of leaderless organizations." This idea will be familiar to many of us who've been watching open source, wikipedia, and other decentralized online phenomena, but I found that the most interesting parts of this book were about the offline world, and how leaderless organizations have succeeded there.
From the Starfish and the Spider Wiki
And it's not just a entrepreneurs and terrorists who are latching on to this distributed network stuff:
The Earth Intelligence Network
Earth Intelligence Network (EIN), a non-profit with 501c3 status pending exists to provide social intelligence capital by harnessing the distributed intelligence of the Whole Earth and creating a new integrated global mesh that enables life-long education, decision-support, focused research, and consensus-building.
The Earth Intelligence Network has three driving priorities:
1) To create, structure, and share public intelligence in the public interest with respect to the ten high-level threats, the twelve integrated policies to address all threats, and the eight major players whom we must help avoid the horrendous mistakes associated with immoral capitalism and unilateral militarism.
2) To support, at no cost to them, all developers of serious games and games for change that address any or all of the ten threats, twelve policies, and eight major players.
3) To support, at no cost to them, all developers of online budget simulations that can foster citizen understanding of the near and long-term benefits of reality-based budgeting, and the terrible consequences of special interest budgeting.HmmmHmmm
Hmmm. Distributed network of decision makers that operate on their own but towards a communal interest? Seems just like Patrick Byrne of Overstock.com.com.com is talking about with strategic failure to deliver. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
It's no real stretch of the imagination to see why distributed, unorganized networks of a like mind are so difficult to defeat. Napster was able to be targeted only because they controlled the linchpin of having the network traffic go through their servers. Everyone is wanting to do the 'user generated content' thing.
Reader Comments (1)
1) We have identified and are in the next 30 days writing to each of 450 centers of excellence (15 for each of ten threats, twelve policies, and eight challengers) seeking to create, in partnership with Deep Web Technologies and IBM, a free public intelligence grid that offers value-added sense-making of the aggregate back to each participant and to the public.
2) We believe that local, state, and national policies and budgets (the only true representation of actual policy priorities) are completely out of touch with public needs and global as well as local reality.
3) We will NOT be a hub as much as a catalyst. We want to catalyze three groups: a) Reuniting America and its Transpartisan Institute; 2) Serious Game designers; and 3) self-starting individual citizens interested in creating public intelligence at the zip code level in order to "out" disconnects between reality and policy.
Would welcome a chance to have a dialog, on or off line.
Again, thanks for noticing.
Peace.