"A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business." — Henry Ford

This is a list of my favorite, noteworthy, and best business books.  I organized the list of business books into categories so that you can easily compare against your own library of the best business books, and explore the various business books in a more relevant way.

Top 10 Business Books

1. Blue Ocean Strategy, by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne
2. Business Model Generation, by Alexander Osterwalder
3. Flawless Execution, by James D. Murphy
4. Good to Great, by Jim Collins
5. Harvard Business Review on Change (Harvard Business Review
6. In Search of Excellence, by Tom Peters
7. Inside the Tornado, by Geoffrey A. Moore
8. It’s Not the Big That Eat the Small…It’s the Fast That Eat the Slow
9. Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It, by Marshall Goldsmith
10. The Living Company, by Arie De Geus

Branding

• Harvard Business Review on Brand Management
• Married to the Brand: Why Consumers Bond with Some Brands for Life, by William J. McEwen
• The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, by Al Ries
• The Brand Bubble, by John Gerzema
• The Brand Gap, by Marty Neumeier
• WIKIBRANDS: Reinventing Your Company in a Customer-Driven Marketplace, Mike Dover
• Zag: The Number One Strategy of High-Performance Brands, by Marty Neumeier

Business, Business Models, Value Chains

• Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism that Serves Humanity’s Most Pressing Need, by Muhammad Yunus
• Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers, by Alexander Osterwalder
• Harvard Business Review on Managing the Value Chain
• Harvard Business Review on Rebuilding Your Business Model
• Open Services Innovation: Rethinking Your Business to Grow and Compete in a New Era, by by Henry Chesbrough
• Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era, by Amory Lovins
• The New Capitalist Manifesto: Building a Disruptively Better Business, by by Umair Haque
• The Personal MBA, by Josh Kaufman
• Ubiquitous Computing for Business, by Bo Begole

Change, Change Management

• Buy-In: Saving Your Good Idea from Getting Shot Down, by John P. Kotter
• Harvard Business Review on Change
• Leading Change, by John P. Kotter
• Switch, by Chip Heath
• Who Moved My Cheese?, by Spencer Johnson

Competition

• Competitive Advantage, by Michael E. Porter
• Competitive Strategy, by Michael E. Porter
• How Companies Win, by Rick Kash
• It’s Not the Big That Eat the Small…It’s the Fast That Eat the Slow
• Reality Check, by Guy Kawasaki

Culture

• Generations, Inc., by Meagan Johnson
• Soup: A Recipe to Nourish Your Team and Culture, by Jon Gordon
• The Cluetrain Manifesto, by Christopher Locke
• The No Asshole Rule, by Robert I. Sutton

Customer Focus, Service Delivery

• Harvard Business Review on Customer Relationship Management
• Raving Fans, by Ken Blanchard
• Relationship Economics, by David Nour
• Satisfaction: How Every Great Company Listens to the Voice of the Customer, by Chris Denove
• The Support Economy, by Shoshana Zuboff

CxO, Executive

• Barbarians at the Gate, by John Helyar
• businessThink, by Dave Marcum
• The CIO Edge: Seven Leadership Skills You Need to Drive Results, by Graham Waller
• The Effective Executive, by Peter F. Drucker
• The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization, by Peter F. Drucker
• What the CEO Wants You to Know, by Ram Charan
• WINNING, by Jack Welch

Decision Making

• Harvard Business Review on Decision Making

Effectiveness

• egonomics: What Makes Ego Our Greatest Asset (or Most Expensive Liability), by David Marcum
• Luck by Design: Certain Success in an Uncertain World, by Richard E Goldman
• Never Eat Alone, by Tahl Raz
• Rules of Thumb: 52 Truths for Winning at Business Without Losing Your Self, by Alan Webber
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen R. Covey
• The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness, by Stephen R. Covey
• The Go-Giver, by Bob Burg
• Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill

Entrepreneurs, Start-Ups

• Inside the Tornado, by Geoffrey A. Moore
• Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days, by Jessica Livingston
• Losing My Virginity: How I’ve Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way, by Richard Branson
• Ready, Fire, Aim, by Michael Masterson
• The Art of the Start, by Guy Kawasaki

Excellence

• Built to Last, by Jim Collins
• Flawless Execution, by James D. Murphy
• Good to Great
• In Search of Excellence, by Tom Peters

Execution

• Execution, by Larry Bossidy
• The Knowing-Doing Gap, by Robert I. Sutton
• Know-How, by Ram Charan

Finance

• Rich Dad’s Conspiracy of the Rich, by Robert T. Kiyosaki

Globalization

• C-Scape: Conquer the Forces Changing Business Today, by Larry Kramer
• Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World, by Don Tapscott
• The Creation and Destruction of Value, by Harold James
• The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us, by Robyn Meredith
• The Temporary Society, by Warren Bennis

Home Business

• Undress for Success, by Jack M. Nilles

Innovation

• Change the Way You See Everything through Asset-Based Thinking, by Hank Wasiak
• Crossing the Chasm, by Geoffrey A. Moore
• Gamestorming, by Sunni Brown
• Harvard Business Review on Innovation
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship, by Peter F. Drucker
• Orbiting the Giant Hairball, by Gordon MacKenzie
• Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell
• Seizing the White Space, by Mark W. Johnson
• The Art of Innovation, by Jonathan Littman
• The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• The Elegant Solution: Toyota’s Formula for Mastering Innovation, by Matthew E. May
• The Innovator’s Dilemma, by Clayton M. Christensen
• The Toyota Way, by Jeffrey K. Liker
• Thriving on Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution, by Tom Peters

Knowledge Management, Performance Management, Training

• Harvard Business Review on Knowledge Management
• The Fifth Discipline, by Peter M. Senge
• Training Ain’t Performance, by Harold D. Stolovitch

Leadership

• Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within, by Robert E. Quinn
• Leading with Questions, by Michael J. Marquardt
• Love Leadership, by John Bryant
• Soul at Work, by Margaret Benefiel
• The Logic Of Failure, by Dietrich Dörner
• The Offsite: A Leadership Challenge Fable, by Robert H. Thompson
• Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, by Seth Godin
• True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership, by Bill George

Management

• Employees First, Customers Second, by Vineet Nayar
• Empowered, by Josh Bernoff
• It’s Your Ship, by D. Michael Abrashoff
• Management of the Absurd, by Richard Evans Farson
• Management Rev Ed, by Peter F. Drucker
• Mastering The Management Buckets, by John W. Pearson
• NOBLE ENTERPRISE, by Darwin Gillett
• The Halo Effect: … and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers, by Philip M. Rosenzweig
• The Talent Masters: Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers, by Bill Conaty
• Up the Organization, by Robert Townsend
• Your Gut is Still Not Smarter Than Your Head, by Kevin J. Clancy

Marketing, Sales

• Duct Tape Marketing, by John Jantsch
• Flip the Funnel, by Joseph Jaffe
• Go-Givers Sell More, by Bob Burg
• Perfect Pitch: The Art of Selling Ideas and Winning New Business, by Jon Steel
• Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, by Al Ries
• Small Is the New Big and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas, by Seth Godin
• Spend Shift, by John Gerzema
• SPIN Selling, by Neil Rackham
• The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, by Al Ries
• The Long Tail , by Chris Anderson
• The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself, by John Jantsch
• The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Ultimate Sales Machine, by Chet Holmes
• Word of Mouth Marketing, by Andy Sernovitz

Motivation

• Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, by Daniel H. Pink
• Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It, by Marshall Goldsmith

Negotiation

• Getting to Yes, by Roger Fisher

Organizational Design

• Managing the Design Factory, by Donald G. Reinertsen
• Software Architecture: Organizational Principles and Patterns, by David M. Dikel
• The Starfish and the Spider, by Rod A. Beckstrom

Outsourcing

• The Black Book of Outsourcing, by Douglas Brown

Productivity

• Make the Right Choice: Creating a Positive, Innovative and Productive Work Life, by Joel Zeff

Strategy, Purpose

• Blue Ocean Strategy, by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne
• Business Model Generation, by Alexander Osterwalder
• Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors, by Michael Porter
• Delivering Happiness
• Doing Both: How Cisco Captures Today’s Profit and Drives Tomorrow’s Growth, by Inder Sidhu
• Good to Great, by Jim Collins
• Rework, by David Heinemeier Hansson
• Strategy Maps: Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes, by Robert S. Kaplan
• The Answer to How Is Yes, by Peter Block
• The Art Of War, by Sun Tzu
• The Well Timed Strategy: Managing the Business Cycle for Competitive Advantage

Strengths

• Go Put Your Strengths to Work, by Marcus Buckingham
• StrengthsFinder 2.0, by Tom Rath

Survival, Longevity

• The Art of the Long View, by Peter Schwartz
• The Living Company, by Arie De Geus

Systems

• Seeing Systems: Unlocking the Mysteries of Organizational Life, by Barry Oshry
• The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, by Michael Gerber

Teamwork

• Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration, by Warren Bennis
• Personality Poker: The Playing Card Tool for Driving High-Performance Teamwork and Innovation, by Stephen M. Shapiro

Trust

• The SPEED of Trust, by Stephen R. Covey
• Who’s Got Your Back: The Breakthrough Program to Build Deep, Trusting Relationships That Create Success–and Won’t Let You Fail, by Tahl Raz

Vision, Mission, Values

• A Simple Statement: A Guide to Nonprofit Arts Management and Leadership

Work-Life Balance

• The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss
• The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life, by Rosamund Stone Zander