5 of the Best Book Recommendations from Top Entrepreneurs

If you’re an entrepreneur, you probably already know that educating yourself on a wide range of issues — finance, marketing, personnel issues, and more — is of paramount importance for the success of your company. But how many new businessmen and women stop to think about the vital importance of broad-based reading?

Recent reporting in the business press has demonstrated that most experienced CEOs of major corporations read, on average, four to five books every month. Strong leaders tend, more often than not, to be eager readers, and a 2012 Harvard Business Review article put the matter quite succinctly, saying, “For Those Who Want to Lead: Read.” The piece goes on to say that the habit of reading widely and deeply, particularly outside of one’s immediate field of business, has enormous potential to increase one’s awareness, and insight, thereby leading to a more innovative mindset.

Here are only a few of the books that have received recent public recommendations from a wide array of today’s outstanding leaders in business and technology:

1. The End of Power by Moises Naim

Published in 2014 by Basic Books, this 320-page paperback focuses, as its subtitle describes, on “boardrooms to battlefields and churches to states.” Naim, a former editor of the magazine Foreign Policy and a respected columnist and scholar, analyzes the shifting nature of power and what it means to be truly powerful.

He observes that the currents of power in the 21st century are turning from the northern hemisphere to the southern one, and from traditional ruling elites to large masses of ordinary people. In addition, women worldwide are slowly, but increasingly steadily, making inroads into positions of power and influence that were once the exclusive province of men.

Naim’s analysis, based on innovative investigations, outlines the ways in which newer, more mobile power players, often aided by emerging technologies, are upending dictatorships and business sectors. This new state of affairs offers a number of opportunities, but it also brings with it new challenges of its own.

2. The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen

This contemporary classic among CEOs, now available in a new 2016 edition by the Harvard Business Review Press, was a favorite of the late Steve Jobs. Christensen, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, was a pioneer in elucidating the theory of creative disruption.

Using a wealth of examples drawn from the corporate and technology worlds, Christensen demonstrates the ways in which innovative disruption reconfigures the landscape for entrepreneurs and consumers alike. By taking advantage of low points within a marketplace, a disruptive startup can upend the market share previously held by large, established corporations.

The author additionally points out that even companies that place a strong emphasis on customer service can fail unless they take that concept a few steps farther to ensure that they are also adopting new technologies and ideas based on their customers’ long-term wants and needs.

3. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

In this 2002 bestseller published by Back Bay Books, the frequent The New Yorker writer outlines how new ideas and ways of looking at the world make the leap from their adoption by a few pioneering individuals to change the ways most of us live. This “tipping point” can see a simple but radical concept from an emerging company eventually result in widespread societal or economic transformation. The book has garnered readers all over the world and altered the way we handle product development, sales, and marketing.

Gladwell’s discussions of exactly how this phenomenon works take into account the “stickiness” of innovations. It also incorporates the force of the context in which these innovations happen, and the ability of well-informed or popular trend-setters to induce large numbers of other people to follow their leads.

4. The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

In this relatively short book, now available from Picador in a 2011 reprint, the physician-author offers his thoughts on reinventing the time-honored checklist of business tasks. Along the way, he demonstrates how the seemingly elementary idea of following a checklist can help create major positive changes in how we live and work in today’s world.

The World Health Organization, in a well-publicized adoption of the ideas in this book, created a basic surgical checklist that has resulted in demonstrable improvements in health care in dozens of countries. Gawande’s main point, that simple checklists can help us tame the sometimes overwhelming complexity of our contemporary information universe, holds implications for all types of organizations, large and small. Additionally, the fascinating stories he uses to illustrate that point can make for engrossing reading for leaders in any industry.

5. Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works by A. G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin

In this 2013 title from Harvard Business Review Press, the authors offer new and established businesspeople an outline for success. Lafley, a former Proctor & Gamble executive, and Martin, his advisor, are known for achieving a 200 percent increase in their company’s sales figures and an exponential growth in profits.

According to Playing to Win, strategic thinking is a skill that almost anyone can learn, given enough hard work and attention. The book details the uses and necessity of developing a well-conceived strategic plan, as well as a roadmap for getting there. In the text, the authors show future business leaders how to figure out where to find their own best playing fields, how to select the right course from among a range of choices, and how to build their teams’ capacities for success.