The Starfish and the Spider was published by Penguin Portfolio in October 2006. The folks at Penguin have been amazing to work with, and I’m thrilled with how the book turned out. Here’s the jacket description:

If you cut off a spider’s head, it dies; if you cut off a starfish’s leg it grows a new one, and that leg can grow into an entirely new starfish. Traditional top-down organizations are like spiders, but now starfish organizations are changing the face of business and the world.

 

What’s the hidden power behind the success of Wikipedia, craigslist, and Skype? What do eBay and General Electric have in common with the abolitionist and women’s rights movements? What fundamental choice put General Motors and Toyota on vastly different paths? After five years of ground-breaking research Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom have discovered some unexpected answers, gripping stories, and a tapestry of unlikely connections. The Starfish and the Spider argues that organizations fall into two categories: traditional “spiders,” which have a rigid hierarchy and top-down leadership, and revolutionary “starfish,” which rely on the power of peer relationships.

 

The Starfish and the Spider explores what happens when starfish take on spiders (such as the music industry vs. Napster, Kazaa, and the P2P services that followed). It reveals how established companies and institutions, from IBM to Intuit to the US government, are also learning how to incorporate starfish principles to achieve success. And it will teach you:

• How the Apaches evaded the powerful Spanish army for 200 years
• The power of a simple circle
• The importance of catalysts, who have an uncanny ability to bring people together.
• How the Internet has become a breeding ground for leaderless organizations
• How Alcoholics Anonymous has reached TK million members with only a shared ideology and without a leader

The Starfish and the Spider is the rare book that will change how you understand the world around you. You’ll never see things the same way again.

You can read more about it at www.starfishandspider.com.

The book is being translated into Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Korean, and Chinese and has generated positive reviews from Newsweek, BusinessWeek, Publishers Weekly, the Boston Globe, Fast Company, and U.S. News and World Report, among others.