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Business Books List

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

Getting Started

  • Business Model Generation, by Alexander Osterwalder
  • businessThink, by Dave Marcum
  • Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors, by Michael Porter
  • The Personal MBA, by Josh Kaufman
  • 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 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

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