Spiders, Starfish, Cheetahs, Hippos and TED

It's been a long time since my last blog post... the struggle of how much to read from other blogs, and where to post the new stuff.

On vacation last week (between the waterskiing and dirt bike riding), I finally read The Starfish and the Spider by Brafman and Beckstrom. (Nod to Susan Brooks-Young for the recommendation.)

This PHENOMENAL book really codifies and validates Friedman's 4th Flattener
of Open-Sourcing. The premise of the book is that organizations can be one of
two structures: a spider, or a starfish. The spider has a head (which can be
squashed) in the form of a CEO, and all of the legs march to the head. The
starfish, on the other hand, is a much more dynamic organism that moves by
agreement and, if you try to kill it, it multiplies.

I was really struck with the "tip" of when a starfish-type community
receives some kind of wealth (revenue from a product, cows, etc.), it quickly
morphs into a spider.

So what does this have to do with cheetahs and hippos? First, let me say if you have never watched any of the TEDtalk videos (www.ted.com), you NEED to spend 18 minutes and listen to one of the speeches. They're on a variety of topics (political, social, environmental, economic, medical, education)... I would recommend the Sir Ken Robinson video as a start.

I'm currently listening to George Ayittey (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/151) talking about the greed of African leaders. What struck me was the title of his talk and his opening (paraphrased) observation:

The cheetah generation is a new breed of Africans. They understand what
accountability and democracy is. They're not going to wait for the government to
do things for them. African's salvation rests on the back of this generation. The hippo generation are the ruling elite. They are stuck in the intellecutal past,
complaining about colonialism and imperialism.

Hmmm... can you match the starfish to the generation?