Do read "The Tyranny of Structurelessness", though. Great read. I enjoyed the analogies to distributed systems here, too.
Intel's StrongARM (originally DEC) chip had the highest perf/watt of any cpu in the industry. They later sold StrongARM to Marvell for 600M. Not only couldn't they create it, they couldn't continue to sell it even though it was widely successful.
The "tyranny essay" is wonderful on many levels. It is mostly about human social-political structures, if one wanted to be true to "structurelessness" you would have to have a constructed double-blind system to enforce it. Otherwise you get fascist overlay that breaks along existing personal power dynamics. The in-group, central cadre and then everyone else on the periphery.
Structureless movements can be extremely effect at scaling an organization, but at some point you need to collapse that chaos into something cohesive.
https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessne...
> This lack of structure, Freeman writes, disguised an informal, unacknowledged, and unaccountable leadership, and in this way ensured its malefaction by denying its existence.[3] As a solution, Freeman suggests formalizing the existing hierarchies in the group and subjecting them to democratic control.
Due to the writing style, I found it really effective for my understanding was to have chatgpt summarize and explain passages, and then have it explain it again.
Making a new product that fills a new niche in a short timespan is viable. Making a product to directly replace what the old system does after decades of iteration is usually a delusion.