The Starfish and the Spider

Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom's The Starfish and the Spider is about the differences between centralized and decentralized organizations, and posits that decentralized organizations have a huge advantage over monoloithic ones. While my bias is certainly towards believing that starfish (decentralized) groups have many advantages over spiders (centralized), I don't think that leaderless organizations have an "unstoppable power" as the book's cover claims. The book doesn't go on to back up that claim, either. I was left with the distinct impression that this is a business school white-paper that's not really all that useful to leaders in the real world. After getting about halfway through, I was rolling my eyes at some of the statements that were made, and the chapters got fairly repetitive about how awesome starfish are.