I am an avid reader of books on business, entrepreneurship, leadership, management, and marketing, among other things. These are what I consider important business books for any aspiring entrepreneur, leader or marketer.
Entrepreneurship
- The Knack: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up by Norm Brodsky & Bo Burlingham
- Growing a Business by Paul Hawken
- Never Bet the Farm: How Entrepreneurs Take Risks, Make Decisions and How You Can, Too by Anthony Iaquinto and Stephen Spinelli Jr.
- Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days by Jessica Livingston
Business Management
- Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by Jim Collins
- Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins
- Winning by Jack Welch
- Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow by Chip Conley
- The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael Gerber
- The Art of War & The Amazing Secrets of Sun Tzu by Sun Tzu and Gary Gagliardi
Leadership & Management
- First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham
- Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham
- True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership by Bill George, David Gergen, & Peter Sims
- Principle-Centered Leadership by Stephen Covey
Marketing
- Guerrilla Marketing: Easy and Inexpensive Strategies for Making Big Profits from Your Small Business by Jay Conrad Levinson
- Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore
- Inside the Tornado: Strategies for Developing, Leveraging, and Surviving Hypergrowth Markets by Geoffrey Moore
- The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen
- The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth by Clayton Christensen
- Seeing What’s Next: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change by Clayton Christensen
- Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath & Dan Heath
- Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin
Finance & Investing
- The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing by Benjamin Graham
- The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America by Warren Buffett
- Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Taleb
- More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places by Michael Mauboussin
- The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley PhD & William Danko PhD
- The Richest Man in Babylon by George Clason
Psychology
- Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships by Daniel Goleman
- Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman
- Influence: Science and Practice by Robert Cialdini
Software Engineering
- Code Complete by Steve McConnell
- The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Frederick Brooks
- Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams by Tom Demarco
- Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules by Steve McConnell