Business Books List

Here is a list of the best business books sorted by categories.

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 Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business, by Patrick Lencioni
• 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
• Getting Results the Agile Way: A Personal Results System for Work and Life, by J.D. Meier
• Harvard Business Review on Change
• Inside the Tornado, by Geoffrey A. Moore
• It’s Not the Big That Eat the Small…It’s the Fast That Eat the Slow
• 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
• Inside the Tornado, by Geoffrey A. Moore
• It’s Not the Big That Eat the Small…It’s the Fast That Eat the Slow
• Reality Check, by Guy Kawasaki
• The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business, by Patrick Lencioni
• Zag, by Marty Neumeier

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 Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business, by Patrick Lencioni
• 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
• The Effective Executive, by Peter F. Drucker
• The Essential Drucker, by Peter Drucker

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
• The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, by Michael Gerber

Excellence

• Built to Last, by Jim Collins
• Flawless Execution, by James D. Murphy
• Good to Great
• In Search of Excellence, by Tom Peters
• Out of the Crisis, by W. Edwards Deming

Execution

• Execution, by Larry Bossidy
• Know-How, by Ram Charan
• Managing the Design Factory, by Donald G. Reinertsen
• Out of the Crisis, by W. Edwards Deming
• Reengineering the Corporation, by Michael Hammer and James Champy
• The Knowing-Doing Gap, by Robert I. Sutton

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

Innovation

• Blue Ocean Strategy, by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne
• 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
• Inside the Tornado, by Geoffrey A. Moore
• 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
• Zag, by Marty Neumeier

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
• First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
• It’s Your Ship, by D. Michael Abrashoff
• Management of the Absurd, by Richard Evans Farson
• Management Rev Ed, by Peter F. Drucker
• Managing the Design Factory, by Donald G. Reinertsen
• Mastering The Management Buckets, by John W. Pearson
• NOBLE ENTERPRISE, by Darwin Gillett
• Out of the Crisis, by W. Edwards Deming
• Reengineering the Corporation, by Michael Hammer and James Champy
• Self-Leadership and the One-Minute Manager, by Ken Blanchard, Susan Fowler, and Lance Hawkins
• The Essential Drucker, by Peter Drucker
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, by Patrick Lencioni
• The Great Game of Business: Unlocking the Power and Profitability of Open-Book Management, by Jack Stack
• The Halo Effect: … and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers, by Philip M. Rosenzweig
• The Practice of Management, by Peter Drucker
• The Talent Masters: Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers, by Bill Conaty
• The Team Handbook, by Peter R. Scholtes, Brian L. Joiner, and Barbar J. Streibel
• Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production, by Taiichi Ohno
• 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 Branding, 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 Change, Design

• Managing the Design Factory, by Donald G. Reinertsen
• Reengineering the Corporation, by Michael Hammer and James Champy
• Software Architecture: Organizational Principles and Patterns, by David M. Dikel
• The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business, by Patrick Lencioni
• The Starfish and the Spider, by Rod A. Beckstrom
• Who Moved My Cheese?, by Spencer Johnson

Outsourcing

• The Black Book of Outsourcing, by Douglas Brown

Productivity

• Getting Results the Agile Way: A Personal Results System for Work and Life, by J.D. Meier
• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, by David Allen
• Make the Right Choice: Creating a Positive, Innovative and Productive Work Life, by Joel Zeff
• Reengineering the Corporation, by Michael Hammer and James Champy

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

• First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
• Go Put Your Strengths to Work, by Marcus Buckingham
• StrengthsFinder 2.0, by Tom Rath

Survival, Longevity

• It’s Not the Big That Eat the Small…It’s the Fast That Eat the Slow
• Reengineering the Corporation, by Michael Hammer and James Champy
• The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business, by Patrick Lencioni
• The Art of the Long View, by Peter Schwartz
• The Living Company, by Arie De Geus

Systems

• Reengineering the Corporation, by Michael Hammer and James Champy
• 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
• The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business, by Patrick Lencioni
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, by Patrick Lencioni
• The Team Handbook, by Peter R. Scholtes, Brian L. Joiner, and Barbar J. Streibel

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
• The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business, by Patrick Lencioni
• Vision: Your Pathway to Victory by Gordon D’Angelo

Work-Life Balance

• Getting Results the Agile Way: A Personal Results System for Work and Life, by J.D. Meier
• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, by David Allen
• The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss
• The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life, by Rosamund Stone Zander