Good Book Recommendations

[Ryan Cross]

On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 1:47 PM, Elias Bizannes <elias.b...@gmail.com> wrote:

As an aside, I read Clive Hamilton's "Growth fetish" about a year ago
and it blew me away as it provided analysis that I've been searching
for years on. But he let us down with his solution...

To follow on with Elias's mention of Clive Hamilton's "Growth Fetish". I'd be interested to hear about any solid book recommendations from people here. There is often a lot of books that are just "hype" and full of fluff, and then there are those books that really tell it how it is or give brilliant insight into the world which people may guard or reference like the bible. I'd be interested to hear what people on this list recommend.

Possible topics: Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Negotiation, Legal, Economics, Accounting/Finance, Management, Team Building, Collaboration, Marketing, or whatever people feel is relevant and interesting.

I'm interested in "classics" and more recent/contemporary stuff too.

To kick things off, here is a list I recently came across that had some good stuff in it. http://personalmba.com/best-business-books/

[silky]

On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 2:18 PM, Ryan Cross <ryane...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > As an aside, I read Clive Hamilton's "Growth fetish" about a year ago
> > and it blew me away as it provided analysis that I've been searching
> > for years on. But he let us down with his solution...
>
> To follow on with Elias's mention of Clive Hamilton's "Growth Fetish". I'd
> be interested to hear about any solid book recommendations from people here.
> There is often a lot of books that are just "hype" and full of fluff, and
> then there are those books that really tell it how it is or give brilliant
> insight into the world which people may guard or reference like the bible.
> I'd be interested to hear what people on this list recommend.
>
> Possible topics: Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Negotiation, Legal,
> Economics, Accounting/Finance, Management, Team Building, Collaboration,
> Marketing, or whatever people feel is relevant and interesting.
>
> I'm interested in "classics" and more recent/contemporary stuff too.

Edward Di Bono - You are right I am wrong.

The book itself is written badly, and full of self-promotion of his
other schemes, but the general ideas in the book are great, and
definitely a worthwhile read for me.

--
silky

[Elias Bizannes]

Three Must Read books
- Wikinomics: How mass collaboration changes everything by Don
Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
- Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
by Clay Shiky

[Pieter Peach]

Jim Collin's "Good to Great" about why the right people matter most in a business venture.

[Yun Huang Yong]

General interest:
  The Perfect Store: Inside eBay - Adam Cohen
  The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell
  Predictably Irrational - Dan Ariely.  As a startup thinking about ease of use, pricing etc its a great reminder of people's behavioural quirks.
  Freakonomics - Steven Levitt
  Super Crunchers - Ian Ayres
  Founders at Work - Jessica Livingston
  AK-47 - Larry Kahaner, this one gun has had a huge impact on the world we live in
  all of the non-fiction by Ben Mezrich (known for documenting the MIT blackjack teams' adventures)

On the management side:
  Good to Great - Jim Collins
  Maverick - Ricardo Semler;  this is pretty out there but interesting ideas
  First, Break All The Rules - Marcus Buckingham
  Now, Discover Your Strengths - Marcus Buckingham

These are pretty well known management books and after reading a few too many management books they all say much the same thing so I only recommend a few.  I'm not really that interested in management but initially read these books to try to explain some of the seemingly irrational decisions made by management in a previous job.  Its remarkable how many of those actions can be attributed to flawed application & misunderstanding of techniques or lessons from these books.

At a personal level I find biographies more interesting to learn from:
  It's Not About the Bike - Lance Armstrong
  Rogue Trader - Nick Leeson (the guy that brought down Barings)
  Masters of Doom - Kushner: about the two Johns who created iD & Doom

Currently reading "The Art of Learning" by Josh Waitzkin, so far so good. :)

yun

--
                                    (__)    Share what you know.
Yun Huang Yong              `\------(oo)    Learn what you don't.
gu...@mooh.org                ||    (__) --'
goos...@yahoo.com      \|/   ||w--||        \|/
--

[Nick HaC]

Ive enjoyed

Small is the New Big (Seth Godin)
Hackers and Painters (Paul Graham)
Founders at Work (Jessica Livingston)
Fooled by Randomness (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
The Art of the Start (Guy Kawasaki)

[rex.chung]

My must read recommendations for tech startups are:

Seeing What's Next (Clayton Christensen)
Blue Ocean Strategy (W. Chan Kim)

http://rexchung.com/2006/06/04/essential-business-books-for-web-entrepreneurs/

Rex.
--
Sydney: +61 421 591 943
HK: +852 6901 2682

Ankoder - Video Encoding On Demand
http://www.ankoder.com

On Jan 29, 1:01 pm, Nick HaC <nick...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ive enjoyed
>
> Small is the New Big (Seth Godin)
> Hackers and Painters (Paul Graham)
> Founders at Work (Jessica Livingston)
> Fooled by Randomness (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
> The Art of the Start (Guy Kawasaki)
>

> > goosm...@yahoo.com      \|/   ||w--||        \|/
> > --

[Warren Seen]

Another +1 for the Tipping Point and also Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.
Haven't got my copy of Outliers yet but expect that will be good too.
Purple Cow and The Big Moo by Seth Godin
Richard Florida's 'Creative Class' books (Rise of, Flight of, etc).

also +1 for Ben Mezrich's non-fiction books. "Breaking Vegas" is
possibly more interesting than "Bringing down the house"

[Ed Loessi]

I think biographies are good as well, I recently read "$1000 and an
Idea" Sam Wyly, he was doing cloud computing back in the 1960's :)

Ed Loessi

[Suhit Anantula]

Made in America (Sam Walton)
Made in Japan (Sony story)

Most of Drucker's books
Adventures of a Bystander (Drucker's biography)
Innovation and Entrepreneurship
The Effective Executive
Managing for Results (probably the first strategy book in the world, written in 1964)
The Definitive Drucker by Elizabeth Haas Edersheim (a good summary of Drucker's work)

Richard Branson's books (any of the three or all of them)
Poor Charlie's Almanac  by Charles T. Munger (of Berkshire Hathaway)
(only available as a special edition from Munger himself)
Economics in one lesson
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore
Re-Imagine by Tom Peters
Leading the Revolution by Gary Hamel (especially the stuff on business model innovation)


For now!

Suhit

--
Suhit Anantula

www.worldisgreen.com
Yahoo/MSN/Skype ID  : suhit_a
www.linkedin.com/in/worldisgreen
www.twitter.com/worldisgreen

"The only way to predict the future is to create it" - Drucker

[Suhit Anantula]

How did I forget Seth Godin. Especially, Meatball Sundae. Awesome.

[mmp1]

First and foremost - Geoffery Moore's - Crossing the Chasm.

also (already mentioned) art of the start, also "here comes
everybody", founders at work.

If you are into startups, well worth reading "high tech startup" -
john l neshiem - very much a valley world view, looks in depth into
fund raising and the emotional and physiological issues you will face
in a startup. It reads like a master thesis, but is full of great
info. ie. every wander what the average take home after IPO for
founders is ? experiences of what can go wrong during neg. for
funding etc.

"the world is flat" - thomas L friedman - book about globalization.

Rich Dad / Poor data - "protect your #1 asset" - easy intro in IP
(very US based).

The Business of Software - eric sink - good micro isv book

MicroISV - from vision to reality - bob walsh.


If you want a good read on just economics - both serious and a bit of
a laugh - P.J. O'Rourke's "Eat the Rich".



On Jan 29, 2:18 pm, Ryan Cross <ryanecr...@gmail.com> wrote:

[David Jones]

1. "Made to Stick" - Chip Heath - if you have a product seeking to be discernibly different.
2. Suprised not to see the now ancient cluetrain manifesto - not sure if the social folks now think its passe/wrong but I think that midsize-enterprises are almost, sorta, kinda grokking that a conversation should happen with customers, so its relevent to me.
3. If you have a team of developers (as opposed to coding founders) PeopleWare by the venerable Tom DeMarco/Lister. Some ideas are old, some ideas are timeless.

Going back to Ryan's original "fluff" question: A frustration I have with some books like Freakonomics and Blink is they are clearly one or two theses padded out to a mandatory word-count - by Chapter 5 I feel the author is stealing my valuable time. Many ppl on this list are producer/creators rather than consumers and probably feel the same. Its weird the book substance is for creators but the content is for consumers. *sigh*
Contrast with the economy of cluetrain or Cory Doctorow's 90 page fiction books - they seem to respect the reader more. I'm not being ADD, I loved gaiman's longer "american gods" (but I digress)

cheers
d.

BTW Ed:- love the quote: "he was doing cloud computing back in the 1960's :)" - that made me smile - emperors/clothes anyone?

[Sherif]

Ive been reading 'Wisdom of the Crowds' by James Surowiecki. If you
are interested in Collaboration stuff - I would strongly recommend it.
Ive almost finished it, and I would strongly recommend it. Will blog a
book review once done.
Sherif

On Jan 29, 6:34 pm, David Jones <david.jo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 1. "Made to Stick" - Chip Heath - if you have a product seeking to be
> discernibly different.
> 2. Suprised not to see the now ancient cluetrain manifesto - not sure if the
> social folks now think its passe/wrong but I think that midsize-enterprises
> are almost, sorta, kinda grokking that a conversation should happen with
> customers, so its relevent to me.
> 3. If you have a team of developers (as opposed to coding founders)
> PeopleWare by the venerable Tom DeMarco/Lister. Some ideas are old, some
> ideas are timeless.
>
> Going back to Ryan's original "fluff" question: A frustration I have with
> some books like Freakonomics and Blink is they are clearly one or two theses
> padded out to a mandatory word-count - by Chapter 5 I feel the author is
> stealing my valuable time. Many ppl on this list are producer/creators
> rather than consumers and probably feel the same. Its weird the book
> substance is for creators but the content is for consumers. *sigh*
> Contrast with the economy of cluetrain or Cory Doctorow's 90 page fiction
> books - they seem to respect the reader more. I'm not being ADD, I loved
> gaiman's longer "american gods" (but I digress)
>
> cheers
> d.
>
> BTW Ed:- love the quote: "he was doing cloud computing back in the 1960's
> :)" - that made me smile - emperors/clothes anyone?
>

[Niki Scevak]

+1 for Founders at Work and also Little Charlie's Almanac as well

I'd also throw in Atlas Shrugged. The single best book I have read
(it's a monster at 1,000 pages though) and particularly relevant given
today's world of doing business with government bailouts.

[Michael Harries]

My best set from software/business/strategy/startup are:

Innovators Dilemma, etc by Clayton Christensen
The Tipping Point and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
The Inmates Are Running the Asylum, Cooper
Blue Ocean Strategy by Chan and Mauborgne
Strategy Safari by Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, Lampel
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffry Moore

--
__
Michael Harries

[Nick HaC]

+1 on Atlas Shrugged (or any Ayn Rand book for that matter)

[Andrew Boyd]

Hi,

I apologise if these have been mentioned previously:
The Monk and the Riddle by Randy Komisar
Cubicle Commando by Zern Liew and Lisa Messenger
Free Prize Inside by Seth Godin

I have to admit that I am more intrapreneur than entrepreneur - to me, these three books encapsulate the heart of intrapreneuring - that it must pay off, that it cannot happen in isolation, and that it may not happen easily - but when it does, it is truly remarkable.

Best regards, Andrew
 

--
---
Andrew Boyd
http://uxbookclub.org -- connect, read, discuss
http://govux.org -- the government user experience forum

[lebard]

Atlas Shrugged helped me with being ok with competition as a teenager.
Although I feel she exhibited brain washing by repeating herself a
lot.

The Third Domain by the National Academy of Sciences is a great book
in the sense that it reveals what it's like to discover something that
truly changes the way the world is viewed (discovery of a third domain
of life, microbes that live in lava tubes for instance) and how
science and others are having a hard time accepting the paradigm
shift. Those who shifted first to the new paradigm have made billions
in biological patents and started some of the largest biotech
companies in the world.

oh and if you like epic stories about elephants I'd recommend Modoc:
The true story of the greatest elephant that ever lived.

For those who don't know me I'm founder of Aussie startup http://www.booktagger.com.

You can check out books I've listed on my shelf here:
http://www.booktagger.com/users/lebard

Jeremy LeBard
Booktagger.com

On Jan 29, 2:18 pm, Ryan Cross <ryanecr...@gmail.com> wrote:

[vashistvishal]

I will add one more to the elite lsit - Against the Gods - The
Remarkable Story of Risk - By Peter L. Bernstein.
This is a must have..

On Jan 30, 11:27 pm, lebard <amityage...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Atlas Shrugged helped me with being ok with competition as a teenager.
> Although I feel she exhibited brain washing by repeating herself a
> lot.
>
> The Third Domain by the National Academy of Sciences is a great book
> in the sense that it reveals what it's like to discover something that
> truly changes the way the world is viewed (discovery of a third domain
> of life, microbes that live in lava tubes for instance) and how
> science and others are having a hard time accepting the paradigm
> shift. Those who shifted first to the new paradigm have made billions
> in biological patents and started some of the largest biotech
> companies in the world.
>
> oh and if you like epic stories about elephants I'd recommend Modoc:
> The true story of the greatest elephant that ever lived.
>

> For those who don't know me I'm founder of Aussie startuphttp://www.booktagger.com.

[Jason Langenauer]

My two cents:

Walden, by Henry David Thoreau - tells you how to live deliberately,
rather than a "life of quiet desperation".
The Magic of Thinking Big, by David Schwartz - I'm only half-way
through it, but this is a fabulous guide to shaking off self-defeating
thoughts and behaviours
The Breakthrough Company, by Keith McFarland - How small companies
become big companies. Very well researched.

Cheers

Jason

[@stevehopkins]

So, apologies if these have been mentioned previously.

Open Minds: Andy Law

The Experience Economy: Pine and Gilmore

Punching In: Alex Frankel

Re-Imagine: Tom Peters

Lead the revolution: Gary Hamel (and pretty much anything by Hamel)

How to Change the World: Borstein (Esp. for social ventures...this
book is amazing)

Anything by Gladwell

Moneyball, Liars Poker, Blindside: Michael Lewis

Mavericks at Work: Taylor and LaBarre (more for intrapreneurship)

Small Giants: Bo Burlingham

and I'm currently half-way through Snowball, the Warren Buffet
biography which outlines really well how he went about STARTING, which
has been really insightful.

Cheers,

Steve

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>
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