The 20+ Books Leaders in SportsTech were Reading in 2019
New food for thought in 2020!
As January quickly passes by, the excitement of the new year can quickly fizzle as well. To help maintain motivation for change and growth in 2020 we’ve asked our podcast guests, entrepreneurs and business leaders in SportsTech, to share what they’ve been reading in 2019. This year’s list included new book recommendations to complement the 2018 and 2017 editions of our overviews and we’re excited to share them all with the SportsTech community.
All in all, over 20 books were included in the list and once again, they ranged in topic, providing a mix of business-focused and sports-related titles with a few miscellaneous mentions in between. Whether it was released decades ago or is still yet to be published, these insightful reads are all worth consideration to add your library in 2020.
Sports Related
- Ash Grunwald: Surf by Day, Jam by Night (Link)
- David Maraniss: When Pride Still Mattered : A Life Of Vince Lombardi (Link)
- Rob Young: Marathon Man (Link)
Startup Related
- Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead & Kevin Maney: Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets (Link)
- Bo Peabody: Lucky Or Smart?: Fifty Pages for the First-Time Entrepreneur (Link)
- Dan Senor & Saul Singer: Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle (Link)
- Doug Tatum: No Man’s Land: Where Growing Companies Fail (Link)
- Peter Thiel: Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future (Link)
- Verne Harnish: Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t (Rockefeller Habits 2.0) (Link)
Business Related
- Amanda Dewinter: The Success Code (Link: Expected July 2020)
- Ashlee Vance: Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (Link)
- Brad Stone: The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon (Link)
- Carmine Gallo: The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience (Link)
- Gary Keller: The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results (Link)
- Kursat Ozenc & Margaret Hagan: Rituals for Work: 50 Ways to Create Engagement, Shared Purpose, and a Culture that Can Adapt to Change (Link)
- Malcom Gladwell: Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know (Link)
- Phil Knight: Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (Link)
- Richard D. Lewis: When Cultures Collide: Leading Across Cultures 4th Edition (Link)
Non-fiction
- Erik Larson: Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania (Link)
- Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre: O Jerusalem! (Link)
- Robin Sharma: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams & Reaching Your Destiny (Link)
Others
New Additions to a Growing List
Peter Thiel’s ‘Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future’ was the only repeated book from our previous lists, which is not at all surprising considering the book’s focus on startups and tips for entrepreneurs. It is still interesting that over 20 books were suggested for the first time, adding the existing lists from 2017 and 2018. Just more evidence that there is a plethora of information-rich books out there for SportsTech enthusiasts seeking inspiration.
We hope these recommendations can help in your search for a good read to continue on a productive path in 2020. Be sure to check out our overview of Productivity Hacks from the same group of SportsTech leaders. After implementing one of their suggested routines for optimizing productivity, you’ll have extra time to read each book on this year’s list of recommendations. Happy reading!
Do you have any more book recommendations to add? Let us know! And be sure to listen to new episodes of The SportsTech Allstars Podcast this year for more inspiring stories from leaders in the global SportsTech ecosystem.
Benjamin Penkert is the Founder of Berlin based SportsTechX — Data & insights about SportsTech startups and the surrounding ecosystem. You can get in touch via Linkedin, Twitter or email.
