10+ top Startup/Business Books 2017

“Our findings of “Good to Great”, do not represent a quick fix, or, or a new ‘program’ to introduce. No! The only way to make any company visionary is through a long-term commitment to an eternal process of building the organization to preserve the core and stimulate progress in improvement.” – Jim Collins, Author

Topics: Books of Book Review: The Startup Way, Crossing the Chasm, Contagious, Product Leadership, Change, Alliance, Innovators, Management, Good to Great, Paranoid.

Most of these books were written in 2017,but one or two awhile ago. Each one of these books has undoubtedly shifted or pushed an Entrepreneur’s thinking toward a greater intuitive sense of what a organization, business, startup, team, or founder looks like when it’s working well. When it’s not, how do you get where you want to go in launching or growing your business. Still — nothing beats experience, and as much as these books have helped Entrepreneurs put together and make sense of what a startup is all about, the highest level of understanding must be attained though creating & doing. So go for it !!! Bill Gates said “You learn from your mistakes, so just do a re-take (as Movies do). Failing fast gets you to your goal faster. [Not in Ranking order]

1. The Startup Way by Eric Ries [Lean]

The Startup Way is essentially the 2017 revision of his original book The Lean Startup. After 6 years from the original book, Eric re-defines and updates his methods to launching and running a successful startup with the new startup way.

2. Crossing The Chasm by Geoffrey Moore (Growth)

Moore is the Managing Director of a large Business Consulting service. This book is basically an updated version of The Lean Startup of the 90’s. Moore gives strategies & advice for taking your business from early adopters to main-stream consumers. Reading this book helps you understand how to launch your product for “niche-early” Adopters who will be willing to work with product issues and transition to a more competitive main stream market.

3. Contagious by Jonah Berger [Virality]

As Marketing professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, he asks his students: “How do things go viral? How can you create “viral” word-of-mouth around your ads, business, or product? Berger examines the qualities that most viral things share and the psychology behind it – so you can significantly increase the probability of going viral.

4. Product Leadership by Martin Eriksson, Nate Walkingshaw, & Richard Banfield

Whether you’re launching a Startup, running a business in it’s Early Stages, or trying to Manage or Scale – what has become a successful business, Product Leadership provides tested and proven advice for Product Managers to successfully Launch products & Run Teams.

5. Change by Design by Tim Brown (Strategy)

CEO of IDEO – one of the greatest design firms on the planet. Change by Design shows us how we can use design to improve our organizations, business, startups, methods of work, & society. Reading this shows you just how much deliberate design impacts and improves the day-to-day quality of our lives.

6. The Hard Thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz [Tuff Decisions]

This book will remind you that under all the how-to business advice out there, no amount of intellectual understanding will get you around the hard decisions you will have to make in order to create a successful business. Ben lets us know that anyone who claims to know the perfect Business Success Formula is fake news. No such magic formula or the same correct way of creating a business that exists. Each business situation is unique. You must get the best strategy to get to your goals. Get a Mental (whoops) Mentor who’s been thru it and can give you some good advice.

7. The Alliance by Reid Hoffman [Team]

The founder of LinkedIn provides a framework for the future of employee-to-employer relationships, hiring, & positioning your talent to integrate into your Team. The underlying message is that you should be radically transparent with employees from the beginning, to acknowledge & discuss, how long an employee intends to stay with a company and even help them transition to wherever they end up next. The company exists to transform the employee’s personal Career and the employee to transform the business.

8. The Innovators Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen [Failing]

American Author, Business Consultant & Professor at Harvard Business School says this one is more of a classic approach to business and shows the reason companies “fail”, is not because of poor management, but a good management that inhibits many companies from innovating. It’s not that large companies are completely risk-averse. In fact, many large companies are testing things and taking risks all the time. These risk are just not radical enough because they never seem like a good idea.

9. High Output Management by Andrew Grove (1983)

A classic by Intel CEO, on measuring your successes in management against results & output. Altho’ written in the 80’s, Andy Grove’s advice for managers is still amazing – to increase their output in the work place. The advice in this book has stood the test of time in the extremely fast-paced world of High Tech.

10. Good To Great by Jim Collins (2001)

Collins (Business Consultant, & best selling Author, on the subject of company sustainability & growth) examines several case studies of companies and their founders who took a company from “good to great”. There are so many good principles in this book, you’ll have to pick your own favorite. With a little effort, you will build the momentum on your success wheel to become great.

11. Only The Paranoid Survive by Andrew Grove

When technology fundamentally changes, as an established organization you can either ride the wave or crash and burn. Unfortunately, you have no choice and you must do this almost overnight or your business will die. Grove (co-founder & CEO of Intel) calls these moments “inflection points”, and what makes a business successful in one area usually inhibits that company from adapting to it’s newly forming industry. Under Andy Grove, Intel was able to make a fundamental transition of it’s business from memory chips to micro-processors as Intel’s primary product.

Comments: Any other Business Books in 2017 that you were impressed with?

from The Startup.com 17 Dec 17 enhanced by Peter/CXO Wiz4biz

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