Beckström is the Director of the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and reports to Secretary Michael Chertoff

Rod co-authored The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations that presents a new model for analyzing organizations, leadership style and competitive strategy. He has co-authored three other books including one on Value at Risk (VAR), a fundamental theory of financial risk management now used to regulate banking globally.

As an entrepreneur Rod started his first company when he was 24 in a garage apartment and subsequently grew it into a global enterprise with offices in New York, London, Tokyo, Geneva, Sydney, Palo Alto, Los Angeles and Hong Kong. The company, CAT•S Software Inc., went public and was later sold. Nobel Laureates Myron Scholes and William F. Sharpe served on the company's boards of advisors and directors, respectively.

Rod also co-founded Mergent Systems with Dr. Amos Barzilay and Assistant Professor Michael Genesereth of the Stanford Graduate School of Computer Science. Mergent was a pioneer in inferential database engines and was sold to Commerce One for $200 million. He also co-founded TWIKI.NET, a company offering service and support for an open source wiki and collaboration software system.

From 1999 to 2001 Rod served as the Chairman of Privada, Inc. Privada was a pioneer in technology to enable private, anonymous and secure credit card transaction processing over the internet.

Rod has helped to start numerous non-profit groups and initiatives. In 2003 he co-founded a peace network of CEO's which initiated Track II diplomatic efforts between India and Pakistan. This group took symbolic actions which led to opening the borders to citizens, trade and contributed to ending the most recent Indo-Pak war. He serves on the boards of the Environmental Defense Fund and the Jamii Bora Trust (micro-lending) in Africa.

Rod invested in eBay through a venture capital partnership and realised a 90,000% return on investment.

He has continued to be on the cutting edge of organisational structures through his work with Silicon Valley companies as an angel investor and limited partner in leading venture capital funds.

Outside the business world, Rod designed and helped launch (with Ori Brafman) a nimble decentralised network of more than 1,300 CEOs worldwide working for peace and economic development. He also co-founded a network of Indian and Pakistani CEOs which is widely credited with finally opening the borders between the two countries in 2003.

Rod then used his knowledge of new network based organizational structures to co-author The Starfish and the Spider: the Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations (with Brafman). The book analyses in an entertaining way how a new form of organisations and a new style of management, based on starfish networks, is taking the business, social and geopolitical worlds by storm. It is the first book to explain the subtle yet incredible power of decentralised organizations. The implications for companies, leaders and the world are both profound and urgent.

Rod graduated from Stanford University with an MBA and a BA with Honors and Distinction. He served as Chairman of the Council of Presidents of the combined Stanford student body (ASSU) and was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.

Rod has appeared on FOX, CNBC, MSNBC, BBC and CSPAN.

Speeches and Clients

He has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the State of the World Forum, The World Technology Summit, and the Young President's Organization (YPO) Global Leadership Summit, IFR, ISDA, Euromoney, Harvard, Stanford, Google, eBay, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Napster, Starbucks, and many more.

Book jacket summary of The Starfish and The Spider

If you cut off a spider's head, it dies; if you cut off a starfish's leg it grows a new one, and that leg can grow into an entirely new starfish. Traditional top-down organizations are like spiders, but now starfish organizations are changing the face of business and the world.

What's the hidden power behind the success of Wikipedia, craigslist, and Skype? What do eBay and General Electric have in common with the abolitionist and women's rights movements? What fundamental choice put General Motors and Toyota on vastly different paths? After five years of ground-breaking research Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom have discovered some unexpected answers, gripping stories, and a tapestry of unlikely connections. The Starfish and the Spider argues that organizations fall into two categories: traditional 'spiders,' which have a rigid hierarchy and top-down leadership, and revolutionary 'starfish,' which rely on the power of peer relationships.

The Starfish and the Spider explores what happens when starfish take on spiders (such as the music industry vs. Napster, Kazaa, and the P2P services that followed). It reveals how established companies and institutions, from IBM to Intuit to the US government, are also learning how to incorporate starfish principles to achieve success. And it will teach you:

* How the Apaches evaded the powerful Spanish army for 200 years
* The power of a simple circle
* The importance of catalysts who have an uncanny ability to bring people together.
* How the Internet has become a breeding ground for leaderless organizations
* How Alcoholics Anonymous has reached TK million members with only a shared ideology and without a leader

The Starfish and the Spider is the rare book that will change how you understand the world around you. You'll never see things the same way again.

Book Rod A Beckstrom

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