ENG 314-001

Critical Resource Analysis:
The Starfish and the Spider
The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organization
by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom

The Starfish and the Spider provides an interesting look at the idea behind decentralized organizations, and the power that they can have upon the population. The book compares centralized and decentralized organizations to a spider and a starfish.

Perhaps the most pertinent way to describe the metaphor of the starfish and the spider is to describe the differences between a centralized organization and a decentralized organization. A centralized organization is like a company with a CEO. The CEO is the head that controls most of the power within the organization. The power filters down from that one head and flows into the legs. There is command. There is central power. There are rules.

A decentralized organization is very different. There is no clear leader, which means the power is all equally shared between the pieces. An example of decentralized organization that uses technology is LimeWire, the file sharing software that uses P2P to share millions of songs online. Each person uploads a song file, and without everyone the system would not work because files would not be uploaded and shared within the server. It is a system that has evenly distributed power and great flexibility within its infrastructure.

A spider (centralized) has many legs branching from a single head; in fact it has more legs than a starfish (decentralized). But if you cut off the head, the spider dies: nothing is there to continue the organization. The opposite is true of a starfish. It has no distinct head. If you cut off an arm of a starfish, it grows a new arm in its place. An arm that has been cut off from a starfish can actually grow itself a complete new starfish.

A decentralized organization is an interesting concept because no one is in charge and therefore, everyone must keep everyone else in check to make sure that the organization is up and running properly. All the parts of the organization can operate independently of each other. With the invention of the Internet, decentralized organizations are becoming even more prominent and widely spread. An example of this is Craigslist. Yes, a man named Craig created the organization and original infrastructure. But the entire site is now run as a completely free ad space that is dominated and controlled by the public. Each person is equally important—be it posting, answering or just browsing on the site. It is completely run and organized to the public.

Sites like Craigslist and Wikipedia are constantly fluctuating and mutating—as a starfish would when it is faced with a problem, or a change. Wikipedia is a site that is dependent upon user domains and input. People write for the site, others edit the content, and then even more people can change and fix the content further. It is a process that is dependent on all of its individual parts. The power is shared through all pieces and users.

Decentralized systems can mutate and change easily, making the structures sneaky. Al Qaeda is an example of a decentralized organization that is successful in a hurtful way. There is no direct head of the organization, which means that it is difficult to bring the group down because if one piece is cut off, more parts of the group are still left to carry out the task at hand. This is opposite of the democratic system in the United States, where the system is almost completely centralized and dominated by powerful people.

Reading the Starfish and the Spider was a different and insightful look at the extreme power that is created within a situation of shared power. Sometimes a decentralized organization can lead to chaos, but in that chaos lays a layer of creativity. The secret of success is within the networking, the contributions of the eager, and the catalyst of the idea.

There are many ways that this structure of decentralization could be implemented into the community advocacy project. The idea of a decentralized organization could be used within this project in order to help people start their own organizations and groups about recycling and advocacy. Decentralization is especially useful for non-profits because it can essentially be free to publicize your message. The other members of the community who are also interested in whatever you're advocating are the mode in which you spread your message. A Facebook group is like a starfish as well, it can have a direct creation by someone, but the individual members that share power within the group lead all the posts/activity/discussions. There is no one person dictating and holding all of the power. Decentralized organizations give people who would normally be passive, the opportunity and easy access to become active participants in any sort of cause that they're interested in.

It is possible to take the information presented in this book and pump the information back into the general public, who can turn it around and use the power themselves to make a change. There are many techniques that are offered in this book that make the idea of decentralized power applicable to groups that promote advocacy. If it is possible to have a site where people can post ideas, then people can edit ideas and change them to make the ideas better. If people contribute and create, then the distributed power of the group keeps moving and shaping directly to the cause. If we network, if we communicate through the medium of the Internet, then the advocacy can spread and develop throughout the cause.