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Changes The Rules Of The Game

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Contrary to common wisdom, the absence of traditional leadership does not necessarily lead to chaos. In fact, powerful groups seem to emerge filling the vacuum and changing the landscape of industry and society. Decentralization has changes the rules of the game. What once was considered weakness due to lack of structure and defined leadership and organization, has become a major force to reckon with, often dealing major blows and defeating traditional centralized organization. Brafman and Beckstrom likens the centralized organization to a spider that has eight legs and eight eyes. Cut off the head and the whole organism dies. Similarly in centralized organization, do away with the leader/leadership and such organization would languish and collapse. However, this is not the case with decentralized organizations that are likened to a starfish. There are no heads or leaders to go after. If you cut off one arm of the starfish, the organism can regenerate the lost arm and the severed arm can also regenerate the whole organism as well. Like a starfish, attacking a decentralized organization can lead to a magnified opposing push-back. The authors dig into past anthropogenic history and current economic phenomena for examples to shed light on the immense power that such decentralized organizations wield. They also address how to spot and distinguish starfish organizations, the importance of their core components, and strategies to defeat these organizations. In late March 2005,

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