Bitz Blog - Google's Starfish

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

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Reading "The Starfish and the Spider" now. The book is about how decentralized organizations and entities (the "starfish") without clear hierarchy and leadership are equipped to defeat classic, centralized organizations (the "spider"). One of the first examples given in the book are the p2p music sharing sites that defeated the big record labels.
I immediately started thinking about the centralized giants of software and the internet, and who their "starfish" were.
So with Microsoft it's easy: the Linux operating system is the starfish that "defeated" it.
What about Google (the web search / web advertisement spider) and Amazon (the online shopping spider)? Who (or "what") is going to be their starfish? I think inventing that starfish will be quite interesting.

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Get in touch: pasha at cohai dot co

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 4:43:37 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)

Comments [9]

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 5:17:43 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)

I need to see that book..

And what is the relation between Microsoft's "defeat" and "Music label"'s ?

Microsoft: Linux has been posed to take over the desktop for 10 years. So far, marginal usage at best (but it is direct competition)
Music labels: p2p - Made a bad thing (theft) socially acceptable (much like slavery 200 years ago). They produce no new content.

Completely unparalleled comparison.

And its mainly the big guys who are kicking each other's asses. With the "starfish" organizations being marginal players who's success at real (not like p2p) competition is quite small.

Are there other examples in the book ?

Boris

Thursday, December 17, 2009 12:50:40 AM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)

Of course, my comparison is very high-level.

Other examples in the book: the decentralized Apache tribe successfully fighting the Spanish conquerors, Al-Qaeda.

Pasha

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