Thinking of starting your own business, but have no idea where to start. Are you also in this situation right now? If yes, we bring you some best business books which will motivate you and guide you whenever you are in need.
Reading not only gives us joy but also we get to learn a lot of unique things which help us see our life from a different perspective. Every day is not the same in anybody’s life, some days are good whereas some are bad. And what can be a better way to motivate yourself other than reading?
Business books never fail to do one thing is that it provides you with business acumen. You will get to know the stories that provide context around challenges and opportunities. And this will open your mind up to new choices that you may not have considered before. You can learn when to grab the opportunity and what common mistakes to avoid.
Here are the top 10 business books
1. Always Day One: How the Tech Titans Plan to Stay on Top Forever
Written by Alex Kantrowitz, a senior technology reporter for BuzzFeed News, always Day One reveals behind the scenes workings of the most powerful companies in the world. If you look around, you will find that today most companies build advantages, and then they put all the efforts to defend it rather than focusing and inventing the future. But tech titans Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are operating in Day One: they prioritize reinvention over tradition and collaboration over ownership.
Always Day One provides the blueprint of these tech giants for sustainable success in a business world where no advantage is safe.
Check the full video of Jeff Bezos on why it’s always day 1 at Amazon.
2. Billion-Dollar Brand Club: How Dollar Shave Club, Warby Parker, and Other Disruptors Are Remaking What We Buy, by Lawrence Ingrassia
This book takes us inside a business revolution: the upstart brands taking on the empires that long dominated the trillion-dollar consumer economy.
Through this book, Lawrence Ingrassia, former business and economics editor and deputy managing editor at the New York Times reveal the world of the entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and corporate behemoths battling over this terrain. He also put forth a growing number of digital entrepreneurs who have found new and creative ways to crack the code on the bonanza of physical goods that move through our lives every day.
Once there were walls that protected big brands like Gillette, Sealy, Victoria’s Secret, or Lenscrafters, savvy and hungry, but now they have discovered that manufacturing, marketing, logistics, and customer service have all been flattened, and innovators can compete on price, value, quality, speed, convenience, and service.
Read the book and get to know how smart companies do smart things with advertising and much more.
3. Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments, by Stefan H. Thomk
Experiments are the basis of everything, from business to discoveries in science. In this book, Harvard Business School Professor Stefan Thomke explains the best practices in business experimentation and illustrates how these practices work at leading companies. You will also get answers to some fundamental questions like, What makes a good experiment? How do you test in online and brick-and-mortar businesses? In B2B and B2C? How do you build an experimentation culture? etc.
This is a well-researched, eye-opening book that shows us how hugely successful companies, like Amazon, Booking.com, and Microsoft, and many other organizations prove that experimentation provides a significant competitive advantage. And, how can managers create this capability at their own companies?
Experimentation Works is more of a guidebook to a truly new way of thinking and innovating.
Must Check: Books to get an Entrepreneurial Perspective
4. Intentional Integrity: How Smart Companies Can Lead an Ethical Revolution, by Robert Chesnut
Defining integrity is difficult, but not talking about it may create ambiguities about right and wrong, especially now, when workplaces are becoming more diverse, global, and connected.
Silicon Valley expert and former chief ethics officer, Robert Chesnut presents the idea that companies that do not think seriously about integrity are destined to fail. And in this book, he offers a six-step process for leaders to foster and manage a culture of integrity at work. If you are looking for books on leadership, then On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis is a good read
Also, Chesnut believes that if the private sector acts with integrity, it can use sensitivity and flexibility to make broader progress.
Buy Intentional Integrity: How Smart Companies Can Lead an Ethical Revolution
5. Lead From the Future: How to Turn Visionary Thinking Into Breakthrough Growth, by Mark W. Johnson and Josh Suskewicz
Mark W. Johnson, co-founder of Innosight, and Josh Suskewicz present the power of long term thinking through this book. They layout a new and innovative approach to developing and executing the visionary ideas that drive breakthrough growth.
This book contains a new approach to thinking and managing, called "future-back," that enables any manager to become a practical visionary. The authors have presented a systematic approach, such as principles and mindset that enables you to look beyond the present. A method to turn emerging challenges into opportunities, which will help in overcoming many barriers that exist in established organizations.
This is an inspiring book, and it explains you and your team the need to think clearly, creatively, and expansively, and then act decisively about what comes next.
Take a Look at 8 best business books of all time.
6. No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram, by Sarah Frier
Want to know the extraordinary inside story of how Instagram became the world’s most successful app? Sarah Frier reveals the ground-breaking innovations which have made Instagram from a simple photo app to a $100-billion company in just 10 years.
Basically, this book offers behind-the-scenes glimpses of the launch of the company, to its acquisition by Facebook. It also digs deep into how Instagram has reshaped global business, creating a new economy of influencers and pioneering a business model that sells an aspirational lifestyle to all of us.
Besides, it roots in Instagram’s effects on popular culture, rewiring our understanding of celebrity and creating online performance pressure on all of us.
7. No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention, by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer
Written by Netflix co-founder, Reed Hastings, and Erin Meyer, one of the world's most influential business thinkers, and shortlisted for the McKinsey Business Book of the Year, this book reveals the unorthodox culture behind one of the world's most innovative, imaginative, and successful companies.
As you flip through the pages of the book, it will reveal how Netflix, which launched in 1998 as an online DVD rental service is now generating billions of dollars in annual revenue.
Get to know more about this book.
8. When More Is Not Better: Overcoming America's Obsession with Economic Efficiency, by Roger L. Martin
Roger L. Martin is the former Dean of the Rotman School of Management and the world’s #1 management thinker. Through this book, Martin unfolds his points that we have relentlessly pursued efficiency at the expense of resilience, and, by doing so, we turn efficiency into a destructive force that has produced an unequal society and a fragile economy.
You will get to know the dark side of efficiency, pointed out by Martin through evidence, rigorous economic analysis, and insight. He also outlines that our constant effort to make the economic machine more efficient means fewer bigger winners and plenty left behind.
This book is filled with economic insight and advice for citizens, executives, policymakers, and educators, and it is a must-read guide for saving democratic capitalism.
9. Whistleblower: My Journey to Silicon Valley and Fight for Justice at Uber, by Susan Fowler
The whistleblower is an inspiring memoir of Susan Fowler. In 2017, Susan shared her story of sexual harassment and retaliation she'd experienced as an entry-level engineer at Uber through a blog post detailing everything.
In this book, she reveals that the courageous act was entirely consistent with her young life so far: a life characterized by extraordinary determination, a refusal to accept things as they are, and the desire to do what is good and right.
This book is an unbelievable true story of the young woman who faced down one of the most valuable startups in Silicon Valley history. It inspires anyone seeking to stand up against inequality in their own workplace.
10. A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond, by Daniel Susskind
New technologies have never turned out in favour of workers as they get replaced by new machines. But Daniel Susskind demonstrates that advancement in artificial intelligence means that all kinds of jobs are increasingly at risk.
Technological progress could bring about unprecedented prosperity, solving one of humanity’s oldest problems: how to make sure that everyone has enough to live on.
Written by an Oxford economist, this book is a visionary account of how technology will transform the world of work, and what we should do about it.
Read the book to know about it in detail.
We, at OpenGrowth, are continually looking for trending startups in the ecosystem. If you want to know any further information about the startup ecosystem or have any mind-boggling ideas, do refer our other blogs.
