Christine, you’ve raised an interesting question. Culture is very important, and in a society where we worship leaders, breeding starfish may be difficult.

Stephen Downes also asks, “but when the distributed alternatives work so well, one wonders what’s so ‘sweet’ about breaking that model, even if only a little bit”. My read on this book is that the sweet spot pertains to business models and whether one is for-profit or non-profit, you still have to generate enough income to keep whatever organization you have going. The trick is in finding the optimal model for your organization/business within its current environment, which is in constant flux.

The job will be to articulate and explain clearly why, how and who. And getting to that stage could or should involve both top-down questions and bottom-up responses, both focused on identifying and clarifying what will work best … a dynamic two-way flow, if you will.