 "The Starfish and the Spider "
In this Genius Network interview, Joe Polish talks to high-tech entrepreneur Rod Beckstrom about his best-selling book, The Starfish and the Spider.
Order "The Starfish and the Spider "
Interview includes 65 minutes of audio available for immediate mp3 download. Also contains a complete transcript and Hot Tips SheetTM for quick access to interview highlights.
About Rod Beckstrom
Rod Beckström is an entrepreneur and catalyst who has successfully created new businesses and changed established ones through his creative ideas, powerful concepts and passion. He co-authored the bestseller  The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations that presents a new model for analyzing organizations, leadership style and competitive strategy.
When Rod speaks he changes people’s lives and organizations’ strategies.
He does this by sharing from the heart his own stories of high technology, international finance, micro-finance, environmental work, and stories from his experience-rich travels to more than sixty countries around the globe. He has visited the palaces of kings and titans, worked with the rocket scientists in Silicon Valley, done business in thirty-five countries, interviewed people in war zones and even lived in a mud hut in the poorest slum in Africa. From his extensive interactions with people from all levels of society in the Middle East and Africa, Rod can share valuable fresh perspectives with political and business decision-makers, and the general public.
Rod believes in people and Rod believes in miracles. More specifically he believes that all people are capable of producing miracles. All we have to do is tap into our own passions and those of others, and focus on pursuing them with clear intent, collaboration and action. Rod presents clear tools to help unleash this energy.
Every person wants to contribute to the world in some way. Every person also wants to contribute to her or his organization. Rod’s gift is being able to present stories, tools and frameworks that help people unleash the incredible potential they have as humans to transform any situation. To hear Rod speak is to be inspired about what you can do individually and collectively to change the world.
Rod has been a successful entrepreneur and stimulating catalyst in many different environments. He started his first company when he was 24 in a garage apartment and grew it into a global enterprise with offices in New York, London, Tokyo, Geneva, Sydney, Palo Alto, Los Angeles and Hong Kong. That company, CAT•S Software Inc., went public and was later sold successfully.
He has helped to start more than a half dozen non-profit groups and initiatives including Global Peace Networks which seeded a peace network of CEO’s that now has more than 4,000 participants, SV2 (Silicon Valley Social Venture), the Environmental Markets Network, and the Miracle Wine Fund for Micro-lending which has helped move more than $20 million into micro-lending projects globally.
Rod is currently fascinated with wikis, a new collaborative software technology, and how they fundamentally transform teamwork and productivity inside companies and across society. He is Chairman, Co-Founder and Chief Catalyst of TWIKI.NET, the industry leading open source enterprise Wiki. Rod also serves as Chairman of Global Peace Networks, Trustee of Environmental Defense, and Director of Jamii Bora Africa Ltd., a micro-lending group with 140,000 members.
Rod graduated from Stanford with an MBA and a BA with Honors and Distinction. He served as President of the combined Stanford student body and was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.
He lives with his wife and two children in Palo Alto and Santa Cruz California.
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