Scuba Dive Professional Career | Dive Center Management
Best Marketing & Business Management Books for Scuba Diving Industry Professionals
Reference books used in Scubanomics articles. Dive professional career development and dive center management tools.
Updated on July 13, 2021.
“If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins” ~Benjamin Franklin
The latest version of this list of recommended readings has been moved to the Business of Diving Institute, here.How can we make a good living out of our passion for scuba diving?
We have to go beyond the ‘passion’ to master our business skills and knowledge.
Some scuba diving instructors and dive center owners have asked us for reference material to dig further into discussions and analysis started on Scubanomics.
For your convenience, here is a list of marketing and business management books we have used in numerous Scubanomics articles for the dive industry.
Please note: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. It costs you nothing. It simply means that when you click on the link and purchase the item, we may receive a few pennies (depending on which country you are in) to help pay for our coffee, so we keep on writing! All opinions remain our own.
Dive Industry Market Information
- Brand NEW: Scuba Diving Industry Market Data & Statistics by Darcy Kieran and the Business of Diving Institute.
A Blue Ocean Strategy for The Scuba Diving Industry
In the dive industry nowadays, we keep on competing, but we are not growing. Perhaps it’s time to make a blue ocean shift! We’ve had that discussion here: A Blue Ocean Strategy in The Scuba Diving Industry.
- Summary of Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renée A. Mauborgne. If you are not sure about diving into the 300 pages of the complete book, this is an excellent 36-page summary.
- Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renée A. Mauborgne. Principles and tools to create and capture your own blue oceans.
- Blue Ocean Shift: Beyond Competing — Proven Steps to Inspire Confidence and Seize New Growth by W. Chan Kim and Renée A. Mauborgne. A follow-up to Blue Ocean Strategy with more examples and research.
Other Business Management Books for Dive Professionals
Let’s start with the following readings.
- No Thanks, I’m Just Looking: Sales Techniques for Turning Shoppers into Buyers by Harry J. Friedman. We believe these are the most profitable 241 pages you can read!
- Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors by Michael E. Porter. The ‘Five Forces framework’ is a tool to analyze competitiveness in an industry. Once the analysis is done, the goal is to identify a sustainable competitive advantage for your business. Reference article on Scubanomics: Porter’s Five Forces Analysis of The Scuba Diving Industry.
- Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy by Joan Magretta. A summary of competitive advantage, value chain, five forces, industry structure, differentiation, and relative cost.
- Business of Diving by PADI. It’s out of date, but some of the basic concepts can still be valid.
About Thinking Outside the Box…
These are books we suggest to develop our abilities to ‘think outside the box.’ We are in dire need of innovation in the scuba diving industry, and these are inspiring stories.
- SwitchPoints: Culture Change on the Fast Track to Business Success by Peter Edwards & al. How to go from good to great. It starts with company-wide culture change. In our case, we need a dive-industry-wide culture change.
- The Pig That Flew: The battle to privatize Canadian National by Harry Bruce. One has to think outside the box to convert a government-owned dinosaur from the worse railroad in North America to the role model every other railroad used as a benchmark. Turnarounds are possible.
The latest version of this list of recommended readings has been moved to the Business of Diving Institute, here.If you enjoy reading about scuba diving and the dive industry, consider signing up to become a Medium member. It will give you unlimited access to my posts and those from thousands of other writers on Medium. If you sign up using my link, I’ll earn a small thank-you commission. Thanks for your support!
Also from Darcy Kieran and The Business of Diving Institute:Reference book: Scuba Diving Industry Market Data & Statistics: 2021 Edition.Guide book: Your Career and/or Life as a Scuba Diving Instructor: How to make a good living out of your passion for scuba diving.Tools: Scuba Proud promotional products to help you recruit more student divers, dive buddies, and instructor candidates.
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What now? You may be interested in the complete Scubanomics Table of Content.
