| "If you take decentralization to an extreme, you get chaos," Beckstrom said. But decentralization is winning, and he has yet to find an industry that isn't moving at least gradually toward decentralization.
Oversee.net, an online ad firm, has 150 employees. Companies that small have traditionally been managed top down. But CEO Lawrence Ng says he has already decentralized his employees into what he describes as SWAT teams and battalions.
"They know their goals. They don't have much intervention from myself or my senior management." Knowing what his teams are capable of accomplishing on their own, Ng imagines that it would be incredibly difficult for a centralized government to fight decentralized terror.
"How many cells are out there? All want to be successful and are coming up with their own strategy," Ng says.
Hoffman says no decentralized company thrives without strong leadership in the field, and the U.S. has probably avoided another attack after 9/11 by effectively taking out the second and third tier of al-Qaeda's leadership, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah. The "decapitation approach" of killing bin Laden would have been less effective, he says.
On the other hand, the U.S. government has been unable to take advantage of one of its greatest areas of business expertise: marketing. Any first-year business school student learns that the first rule is to know the customer. Know the audience.
The U.S. marketing message has focused on freedom and democracy. A little research might show that "stability and justice are what people seek," Hoffman said.
Don Tapscott, whose book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything went on sale Dec. 28, says we've entered a time when people with no relationship other than a passion can come together to invent an encyclopedia or a computer operating system. California is thinking about using such collaboration to "wiki all school books," he says, which means using software that allows users scattered throughout the world to collaborate to create and edit.
There are 90,000 chemists online, 90,000 problem solvers, Tapscott says. Groups of strangers with an ideology — a passion — can "create a school book, a mutual fund, a motorcycle. They can also create terror."
It's unfortunate that the bad guys use the same tools as the good guys, says Craigslist founder Newmark. But the good guys have an advantage, he says.
"You can build a network around hatred that works in the short run. The way to disrupt a culture of hatred is to be noisy about a culture of trust. Until recently, the United States has stopped hatred from developing by standing up for our ideals," he says.
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