Getting large groups of people without leaders to agree on a direction is like trying to herd cats or people. :) In most businesses, there is a small group of leaders who make the decisions and hand out directives and incentives to those who will help them meet defined goals. Those leaders can adjust the goals and directives to meet changing market conditions.

I think that decentralized businesses would do well to make use of so-called social technologies for decentralized decision making. One option is holacracy another option is sociocracy. I don't have first hand experience with either, but they both seem to revolve around the following ideas:

• Hierarchical structures are replaced by "circles", "sub-circles", and "roles" which can be understood by analogy to the human body/organs/cells.
• Circles and sub-circles are populated with groups of people in an organization who are pursuing a particular shared goal.
• Communication between circles happens by way of "links" - individuals who are members of multiple groups.
• Individuals are fully empowered to make decisions within their own role's scope. They get their assigned roles by being voted into it by the relevant circles.

If I recall correctly, sociocracy comes out of 18th century organization techniques that were used by western-European church groups, like the Quakers, and holacracy is a relatively recent extension of sociocracy.

I've never seen it put into practice first-hand, but it sounds like it would be useful. ; -)