Quote: (03-06-2012 12:50 PM)youngmobileglobal Wrote:
http://personalmba.com/best-business-books/
I have picked 20 books from this list that I plan to knock out during the next 6 months.
I'm sure there are very prolific readers on this forum. Has anyone read books from this list and have comments to say about any of them?
As I go through them, I'll give a writeup, my thoughts, and whether or not it's worth reading beyond a summary.
That book list is very good for general business topics and self-education; it's just OK if you are an entrepreneur looking to build a scalable business (not a lifestyle business). There's nothing wrong with lifestyle businesses, but scalable businesses need a different level of thinking, knowledge, and creativity. If you read his books under "Business Creation" you'll find they're lifestyle-business focused.
The list does deliver on its promise though - it is an MBA-oriented roster of books. The majority of MBA programs, and MBA graduates, go on to
run businesses, not start them; e.g. Seth Godin, a Stanford Business School grad and successful entrepreneur, observed in his book "The Bootstrapper's Bible" that at least half of his classmates intended to start a business, but 20 years on, less than 10% actually did. And that's at one of the very best, most entrepreneurial program in the world.
Great books if you want to be an at-scale-entrepreneur:
- How to Get Rich, by Felix Dennis
- Business Model Generation
- How to be a Billionaire
...those will get you thinking big.
Felix Dennis, in particular, is one of the very few billionaire-level entrepreneurs who can write and tell you straight-up what it takes. The BMG book will get you thinking out of the box by showing you how to figure out the box; biz models are extremely important. HtbaB will relate stories of scale.
I've been meaning to read one of Richard Branson's books next, as another at-scale entrepreneur; haven't yet, so no comment for now.