Updated: All books we have ever recommended on PM Library (271 books)

Alexander Hipp
PM Library
Published in
105 min readDec 21, 2018

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From essentials to inspirational books about product management, AI, leadership, design and collaboration.

Latest update 16th May 2020

→ Moved here: https://thepmlibrary.com/books/

Our overview of all the books we have recommended in The PM Library ever (chronologically)

Inspired

How to create tech products customers love
by Marty Cagan

Why read?

In 2018 Marty Cagan published the second edition of his Product Management classic Inspired. It provides you with a deep dive into how the most successful product-driven companies work today, how they staff and structure their organization and how they develop and ship products customers will love. This book is for everyone at every stage and skill-level of Product Management — if you’re starting off with Product then this is your “bible”.

Chapter 33 tackles the topic on Product Discovery in great detail.

368 pages, John Wiley & Sons 2018

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Build Better Products

A Modern Approach to Building Successful User-Centered Products
by Laura Klein

Why read?

I’d constantly “borrow” this book from one of my best friends (a UX researcher at Google and one of the smartest people I know), so much so that in the end, I had to buy my own copy. It’s full of tools and methods to run ideation workshops to effort sizing exercises. It comes without the fluff that I’ve found in a lot of other books offering the same. Klein is straight to the point, has a great sense of humour and is an expert in the field.

368 pages, Rosenfeld Media 2016

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Change By Design

by Tim Brown

Why read?

Tim Brown is the CEO of IDEO, a widely recognised pioneer of Design Thinking.

In this book, Tim Brown reintroduces design thinking, the collaborative process by which the designer’s sensibilities and methods are employed to match people’s needs with what is technically feasible and a viable business strategy. In short, design thinking converts need into demand. It’s a human-centered approach to problem-solving that helps people and organizations become more innovative and creative.

Change by Design is not a book by designers for designers; it is a book for creative leaders seeking to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization, product, or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.

272 pages, Harper Business 2009

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Sprint

How to solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days
by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky & Braden Kowitz

Why read?

From three partners at Google Ventures, a unique five-day process for solving tough problems, proven at more than a hundred companies.

Entrepreneurs and leaders face big questions every day: What’s the most important place to focus your effort, and how do you start? What will your idea look like in real life? How many meetings and discussions does it take before you can be sure you have the right solution?
A practical guide to answering critical business questions, Sprint is a book for teams of any size, from small startups to Fortune 100s, from teachers to nonprofits. It’s for anyone with a big opportunity, problem, or idea who needs to get answers today.

288 pages, Simon & Schuster 2016

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The Lean Startup

How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
by Eric Ries

Why read?

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup turned into a classic and must-read book when it comes to changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.
The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute.

Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs — in companies of all sizes — a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in an age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

338 pages, Currency 2011

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What Customers Want

Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services
by Anthony Ulwick

Why read?

In a book that challenges everything you have learned about being customer-driven, internationally acclaimed innovation leader Anthony Ulwick reveals the secret weapon behind some of the most successful companies of recent years. Known as “outcome-driven” innovation, this revolutionary approach to new product and service creation transforms innovation from a nebulous art into a rigorous science from which randomness and uncertainty are eliminated.

256 pages, McGraw-Hill Education 2005

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The Four Steps to the Epiphany

Successful Strategies for Products that Win
by Steve Blank

Why read?

The book offers the practical and proven four-step Customer Development process and offers insight into what makes some startups successful and leaves others selling off their furniture.
Rather than blindly execute a plan, The Four Steps helps uncover flaws in product and business plans and correct them before they become costly. Rapid iteration, customer feedback, testing your assumptions are all explained in this book.

384 pages, Wiley 2020

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The Lean Product Playbook

How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback
by Dan Olsen

Why read?

The Lean Product Playbook is a practical guide to building products that customers love. Whether you work at a startup or a large, established company, we all know that building great products is hard. Most new products fail. This book helps improve your chances of building successful products through clear, step-by-step guidance and advice.

336 pages, Wiley 2015

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Escaping the Build Trap

How effective product management creates value
by Melissa Perri

Why read?

Melissa Perri’s first book has the potential to become a real classic. In Escaping the Build Trap she focuses on the most common pitfalls Product Managers and companies fall into when releasing feature by feature instead of focusing on the customer’s needs.

In this book, Melissa — CEO of Product Labs and founder of the Product Institute — helps you to identify whether you are caught in the “build trap” and more importantly, gives you practical advice how to escape it. She brings together her year-long experience of building products and deep knowledge of how product-lead organisations work.

200 pages, O’Reilly Media 2018

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Intercom on Jobs-To-Be-Done

Description
by Des Traynor

Why read?

Great products start with real problems. People buy products and services to get a job done. The key to success is understanding the real job customers are using your product for. Drawing together the most valuable lessons we’ve learned thus far, this book offers tried and tested advice on how you should be thinking about business, growth and innovation.

51 Pages, Intercom 2017

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Competing Against Luck

The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice
by Clayton M. Christensen, Karen Dillon, Taddy Hall & David S. Duncan

Why read?

After years of research, Christensen and his co-authors have come to one critical conclusion: our long held maxim — that understanding the customer is the crux of innovation — is wrong. Customers don’t buy products or services; they “hire” them to do a job. Understanding customers does not drive innovation success, he argues. Understanding customer jobs does. The “Jobs to Be Done” approach can be seen in some of the world’s most respected companies and fast-growing startups, including Amazon, Intuit, Uber, Airbnb, and Chobani yogurt, to name just a few. But this book is not about celebrating these successes — it’s about predicting new ones.

This book carefully lays down the authors’ provocative framework, providing a comprehensive explanation of the theory and why it is predictive, how to use it in the real world — and, most importantly, how not to squander the insights it provides.

288 pages, Harper Business 2016

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The Jobs To Be Done Playbook

Align Your Markets, Organizations, and Strategy Around Customer Needs
by Jim Kalbach

Why read?

These days, consumers have real power: they can research companies, compare ratings, and find alternatives with a simple tap. Focusing on customer needs isn’t a nice to have, it’s a strategic imperative.

The Jobs To Be Done Playbook helps organizations turn market insight into action. This book shows you techniques to make offerings people want, as well as make people want your offering.

300 pages, Two Waves Books 2020

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Jobs to be Done

Theory to Practice
by Anthony W. Ulwick

Why read?

Why do so many innovation projects fail? What are the root causes of failure? How can they be avoided?

Since 1991, Tony Ulwick has pioneered an innovation process that answers these questions. In 1999, Tony introduced Clayton Christensen to the idea that “people have underlying needs or processes in their lives, that they are addressing in some way right now” — an insight that was to become Jobs-to-be-Done Theory.

202 pages, Idea Bite Press 2016

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When Coffee and Kale Compete

Become great at making products people will buy
by Alan Klement

Why read?

A Job to be Done is the process a consumer goes through whenever she aims to transform her existing life-situation into a preferred one, but cannot because there are constraints that stop her. When Coffee and Kale Compete by Alan Klement helps you become better at creating and selling products that people will buy.

227 pages, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2018

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Jobs to Be Done

A Roadmap for Customer-Centered Innovation
by Stephen Wunker & Jessica Wattman & David Farber

Why read?

Successful innovation doesn’t begin with a brainstorming session — it starts with the customer. So in an age of unlimited data, why do more than 50% of new products fail to meet expectations? The truth is that we need to stop asking customers what they want, and start examining what they need.

First popularized by Clayton Christensen, the Jobs to be Done theory argues that people purchase products and services to solve a specific problem. They’re not buying ice cream, for example, but celebration, bonding, and indulgence.

224 pages, AMACOM 2016

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The Jobs-to-be-Done Handbook

Practical techniques for improving your application of Jobs-to-be-Done
by Chris Spiek & Bob Moesta

Why read?

This book is for the Jobs-to-be-Done student and practitioner alike, who may already have a grasp of the concepts. This book is your go-to reference for quickly referring to any of the concepts or processes, so that you can be effective in a flash.

66 pages, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2014

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Dare to Lead

Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.
by Brené Brown

Why read?

Leadership is not about titles, status, and wielding power. A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for recognizing the potential in people and ideas, and has the courage to develop that potential.

Four-time #1 New York Times bestselling author Brené Brown has spent the past two decades studying the emotions and experiences that give meaning to our lives, and the past seven years working with transformative leaders and teams spanning the globe. She found that leaders in organizations ranging from small entrepreneurial startups and family-owned businesses to nonprofits, civic organizations, and Fortune 50 companies all ask the same question:

How do you cultivate braver, more daring leaders, and how do you embed the value of courage in your culture?

400 pages, Random House Large Print 2019

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Leadershift

The 11 Essential Changes Every Leader Must Embrace
by John C. Maxwell

Why read?

Internationally recognized leadership expert John C. Maxwell teaches readers how to shift their leadership to keep innovating, improving, and influencing others in today’s fast-paced world.

Change is so rapid today that leaders must do much more than stay the course to be successful. If they aren’t nimble and ready to adapt, they won’t survive. The key is to learn how to leadershift.

In Leadershift, John C. Maxwell helps leaders gain the ability and willingness to make leadership changes that will positively enhance their organizational and personal growth. He does this by sharing the eleven shifts he made over the course of his long and successful leadership career.

288 pages, HarperCollins Leadership 2019

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The Coaching Habit

Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever
by Michael Bungay Stanier

Why read?

Coaching is an essential skill for leaders. But for most busy, overworked managers, coaching employees is done badly, or not at all. They’re just too busy, and it’s too hard to change.

But what if managers could coach their people in 10 minutes or less?

227 pages, Bertrams Print on Demand 2006

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Trillion Dollar Coach

The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell
by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Alan Eagle

Why read?

The team behind How Google Works returns with management lessons from the legendary coach and business executive, Bill Campbell, whose mentoring of some of our most successful modern entrepreneurs has helped create well over a trillion dollars in market value.

Bill Campbell played an instrumental role in the growth of several prominent companies, such as Google, Apple, and Intuit, fostering deep relationships with Silicon Valley visionaries, including Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt. In addition, this business genius mentored dozens of other important leaders throughout USA, from entrepreneurs to venture capitalists to educators to football players, leaving behind a legacy of growing companies, successful people, respect, friendship, and love after his death in 2016.

240 pages, Harper Business 2019

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Leadership is an Art

by Max Depree

Why read?

In what has become a bible for the business world, the successful former CEO of Herman Miller, Inc., explores how executives and managers can learn the leadership skills that build a better, more profitable organization.

De Pree looks at leadership as a kind of stewardship, stressing the importance of building relationships, initiating ideas, and creating a lasting value system within an organization. Rather than focusing on the “hows” of corporate life, he explains the “whys.” He shows that the first responsibility of a leader is to define reality and the last is to say thank you.

148 pages, Currency 2004

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The Making of a Manager

What to Do When Everyone Looks to You
by Julie Zhuo

Why read?

Top tech executive Julie Zhuo remembers the moment when she was asked to lead a team. She felt like she’d won the golden ticket, until reality came crashing in. She was just 25 and had barely any experience being managed, let alone managing others.
This is the book she wishes she had on day one. Here, she offers practical, accessible advice like:

· Don’t hide thorny problems from your own manager; you’re better off seeking help quickly and honestly
· Before you fire someone for failure to collaborate, figure out if the problem is temperamental or just a lack of training or coaching
· Don’t offer critical feedback in a ‘compliment sandwich’ — there’s a better way!

Whether you’re new to the job, a veteran leader, or looking to be promoted, this is the handbook you need to be the kind of manager you’ve always wanted.

274 pages, Virgin Digital 2019

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Death by Meeting

A Leadership Fable — About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business
by Patrick Lencioni

Why read?

Casey McDaniel, the founder and CEO of Yip Software, is in the midst of a problem he created, but one he doesn’t know how to solve. And he doesn’t know where or who to turn to for advice. His staff can’t help him; they’re as dumbfounded as he is by their tortuous meetings.

Then an unlikely advisor, Will Peterson, enters Casey’s world. When he proposes an unconventional, even radical, approach to solving the meeting problem, Casey is just desperate enough to listen.

As in his other books, Lencioni provides a framework for his groundbreaking model, and makes it applicable to the real world. Death by Meeting is nothing short of a blueprint for leaders who want to eliminate waste and frustration among their teams, and create environments of engagement and passion.

272 pages, Jossey-Bass 2004

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The Vision Driven Leader

10 Questions to Focus Your Efforts, Energize Your Team, and Scale Your Business
by Michael Hyatt

Why read?

Having a clear, compelling vision — and getting buy-in from your team — is essential to effective leadership. If you don’t know where you’re going, how on earth will you get there? But how do you craft that vision? How do you get others on board? And how do you put that vision into practice at every level of your organization?
In The Vision Driven Leader, New York Times bestselling author Michael Hyatt offers six tools for crafting an irresistible vision for your business, rallying your team around the vision, and distilling it into actionable plans that drive results.

256 pages, Baker Books 2020

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How to Lead When You’re Not in Charge

Leveraging Influence When You Lack Authority
by Clay Scroggins & Andy Stanley

Why read?

One of the greatest myths of leadership is that you must be in charge in order to lead. Because every road of leadership forks at the intersection of authority and influence, learning to cultivate influence without authority is foundational to navigate culture today.

240 pages, Zondervan 2017

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Disruptive Leadership

Apple and the Technology of Caring Deeply — Nine Keys to Organizational Excellence and Global Impact
by Rich Kao

Why read?

In this highly engaging book, Rich Kao proposes a disruptive leadership framework in which caring deeply is placed at the centre of the model. Kao, therefore, uses practical examples of disruptive leadership practised at big players around the world.

190 pages, Productivity Press 2017

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The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

A Leadership Fable
by Patrick Lencioni

Why read?

In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Patrick Lencioni once again offers a leadership fable that is as enthralling and instructive as his first two best-selling books, The Five Temptations of a CEO and The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive. This time, he turns his keen intellect and storytelling power to the fascinating, complex world of teams.

229 pages, Jossey-Bass 2002

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Radical Candor

Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity
by Kim Scott

Why read?

Radical Candor has been embraced around the world by leaders of every stripe at companies of all sizes. Now a cultural touchstone, the concept has come to be applied to a wide range of human relationships.

The idea is simple: You don’t have to choose between being a pushover and a jerk. Using Radical Candor―avoiding the perils of Obnoxious Aggression, Manipulative Insincerity, and Ruinous Empathy―you can be kind and clear at the same time.
Kim Scott was a highly successful leader at Google before decamping to Apple, where she developed and taught a management class. Since the original publication of Radical Candor in 2017, Scott has earned international fame with her vital approach to effective leadership and co-founded the Radical Candor executive education company, which helps companies put the book’s philosophy into practice.

272 pages, St. Martin’s Press 2017

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Start with Why

How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
by Simon Sinek

Why read?

Simon Sinek shows that the leaders who’ve had the greatest influence in the world all think, act, and communicate the same way — and it’s the opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.

256 pages, Portfolio 2011

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Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader

by Herminia Ibarra

Why read?

You aspire to lead with greater impact. The problem is you’re busy executing on today’s demands. You know you have to carve out time from your day job to build your leadership skills, but it’s easy to let immediate problems and old mindsets get in the way. Herminia Ibarra — an expert on professional leadership and development and a renowned professor at INSEAD, a leading international business school — show how managers and executives at all levels can step up to leadership by making small but crucial changes in their jobs, their networks, and themselves.

200 pages, Harvard Business Review Press 2015

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The Team That Managed Itself

A Story of Leadership
by Christina Wodtke

Why read?

In The Team That Managed Itself, Christina Wodtke teaches leaders how to build and lead high performing teams based on her long career in the trenches in Silicon Valley. Her book is engaging, actionable — and built around a story you’ll want to read.

Learn to lead the team along with Allie as she tackles one challenge after another while the clock ticks down. How do you build the right team and choose the goals to pull them to greatness, even if you’re dealing with a toxic environment? How do you keep your people moving in the right direction without burning out or burning it all down? As Allie finds out, even in the face of overwhelming pressure it’s about setting expectations, giving good feedback, checking in against goals, and learning as a team…

268 pages, Cucina Media, LLC 2019

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Forever Employable

How to Stop Looking for Work and Let Your Next Job Find You
by Jeff Gotthelf

Why read?

In this practical book, Jeff Gothelf shares the tips, tricks, techniques, and learnings that helped him build his own personal brand, and become forever employable.

Using the timeline from his own career and anecdotes, stories, and case studies from other successful recognized experts, Jeff provides a step-by-step guide to building a foundation based on your current expertise, ensuring that no matter what happens in your industry you’ll remain forever employable.

77 pages, Gothelf Corp 2020

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BrandingPays

The Five-Step System to Reinvent Your Personal Brand
by Karen Kang

Why read?

In this highly practical book, Karen Kang delivers a guide to strategic personal branding that you can use to stand out. The method is perfect for professionals and entrepreneurs alike, and has been created by a proven professional in the branding field.

Karen Kang is a recognized brand strategist, and also the CEO and founder of a personal branding company, BrandingPays. So, you can feel confident that she knows what she’s talking about.

208 pages, BrandingPays Media 2013

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Rise of the Youpreneur

The Definitive Guide to Becoming the Go-To Leader in Your Industry and Building a Future-Proof Business
by Chris Ducker

Why read?

Author Chris Ducker coined the term Youpreneur, which forms the centre of his book, Rise of the Youpreneur.

A Youpreneur transcends the old rules of business and builds a sustainable business from the foundation of their experience, interests, and personality — their personal brand. Youpreneurs draw an engaged, loyal audience even as they pursue varying, changing interests. They play by their own rules, and they reap the benefits.

In this book, Chris Ducker shows us how we can build our own personal brand, build the ‘Business of You’, and become a Youpreneur.

288 pages, 4C Press 2018

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Platform

The Art and Science of Personal Branding
by Cynthia Johnson

Why read?

In the modern world, influence is everything, and personal branding equals influence. Platform is the how-to handbook by top expert Cynthia Johnson for everyone who wants to develop and manage a personal brand. In Platform, Johnson explains the process of going from unknown to influencer by achieving personal proof, social proof, recognition, and association.

Anyone who wonders how their favourite influencers found their voices and built their audiences, will find the answers here and discover that the process is technical, creative, tactical, and much easier than they might have expected.

224 pages, Lorena Jones Books 2019

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Digital You

Real Personal Branding in the Virtual Age
by William Arruda

Why read?

Successful branding is based on authenticity. So how do you reveal your own brand? First, by searching yourself for answers to questions like these: What do you do better than anyone? What are you most proud of? What makes you lose track of time?

Willian Arruda, in his book Digital You, describes modern world of personal branding and helps you to define, express, and expand your personal brand for the virtual world. Branding is not about being famous, Arruda explains; it’s about being selectively famous. When you understand the true value of personal branding, you can use it as a serious career development strategy.

150 pages, Association for Talent Development 2019

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Reinventing You

Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future
by Dorie Clark

Why read?

In Reinventing You, Dorie Clark provides a step-by-step guide to help you assess your unique strengths, develop a compelling personal brand, and ensure that others recognize the powerful contribution you can make in your field.

Dorie Clark fills this book with personal stories mixed with interviews and examples from other prominent names, such as Al Gore, Tim Ferriss, and Seth Godin.

240 pages, Harvard Business Review Press 2017

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Introduction to Personal Branding

10 Steps Toward a New Professional You
by Mel Carson

Why read?

This short read brings you a powerful introduction to the topic of personal branding, with 10 actionable steps that you can do immediately.

These actionable steps include advice on how to take the perfect profile photo, how to think about your professional purpose, how to optimize your LinkedIn profile, how to optimize your social media presence for search engines like Google and Bing, how to craft a personal branding statement, how to analyze your competitors across social media so you can make your brand differentiate from theirs and how to be social by design.

65 pages, Delightful Communications 2016

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Hacking Growth

How Today’s Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success
by Morgan Brown & Sean Ellis

Why read?

Written by two of the industry pioneers, this book is a comprehensive toolkit or “bible” that any company in any industry can use to implement their own Growth Hacking strategy, from how to set up and run growth teams, to how to identify and test growth levers, and how to evaluate and act on the results.

Hacking Growth focuses on customers — how to attain them, retain them, engage them, and monetize them — rather than product.

320 pages, Virgin Books 2017

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Traction

How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth
by Gabriel Weinberg & Justin Mares

Why read?

Most startups don’t fail because they can’t build a product. Most startups fail because they can’t get traction.

Building a successful company is hard. Smart entrepreneurs know that the key to success isn’t the originality of your offering, the brilliance of your team, or how much money you raise. It’s how consistently you can grow and acquire new customers.

Traction will teach you the nineteen channels you can use to build a customer base, and offers a three-step framework to figure out which ones will work best for your business

240 pages, Portfolio Penguin 2015

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Growth Hacker Marketing

A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing and Advertising
by Ryan Holiday

Why read?

How do you grow your startup with zero marketing budget? How do you create a buzz, and attract your first customers, without any money to spend?

Some of the biggest tech companies don’t spend a dime on traditional marketing. No press releases, no TV commercials, no billboards. Instead, they rely on growth hacking to reach many more people, despite modest marketing budgets.

In Growth Hacker Marketing, Ryan Holiday shares his experience, teaching you how to harness the power of growth to propel you to success. Featuring insights from leading growth hackers, Growth Hacker Marketing is the essential guide to the revolutionary new approach to growing your business.

142 pages, Profile Books 2014

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Growth Hacking

Silicon Valley’s Best Kept Secret
by Raymond Fong & Chad Riddersen

Why read?

In Growth Hacking, Silicon Valley experts Raymond Fong and Chad Riddersen deconstruct the phenomenon used by many of the most successful Silicon Valley startups.

The growth hacking framework delivered in this book is an easy to understand growth marketing blueprint that empowers any business to apply growth hacking.

204 pages, Lioncrest Publishing 2017

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The Growth Hacker’s Guide to the Galaxy

100 Proven Growth Hacks for the Digital Marketer
by Mark Hayes & Jeff Goldenberg

Why read?

The Growth Hacker’s Guide to the Galaxy is the ultimate collection of growth hacks for the modern marketer.

Intended to be as actionable as possible, inside you’ll find some no-nonsense, concrete tips that you can take and use right away.

270 pages, Insurgent Publishing 2016

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Explosive Growth

A Few Things I Learned While Growing To 100 Million Users — And Losing $78 Million
by Cliff Lerner

Why read?

Explosive Growth goes behind the scenes and follows a startup that produced a dating app which scaled to 100 million users. Though told as a story, the book still packs in loads of practical information that you can take away and use.

This book strikes the right balance between entertaining, and educational, and is widely regarded as a must-have book for growth hacking.

306 pages, Clifford Ventures Corporation 2017

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The Growth Marketer’s Playbook

A Strategic Guide to Growing a Business in Today’s Digital World
by Jim Huffman

Why read?

In The Growth Marketer’s Playbook, Jim Huffman is delivering to you an honest how-to guide for digital marketing. VC advisor and startup founder, Jim Huffman, serves up the exact growth marketing strategies he uses to help companies achieve explosive revenue growth

This book will show you the growth processes used by many current VC-backed businesses, so you can learn and emulate their techniques. Jim also shares some of the most common mistakes that businesses make, so you can take care to avoid the common pitfalls, and increase your chances of success.

158 pages, CreateSpace Independent Publishing 2018

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The Jobs To Be Done Playbook

Align Your Markets, Organization, and Strategy Around Customer Needs
by Jim Kalbach

Why read?

These days, consumers have real power: they can research companies, compare ratings, and find alternatives with a simple tap. Focusing on customer needs isn’t a nice–to–have, it’s a strategic imperative.

The Jobs To Be Done Playbook (JTBD) helps organizations turn market insight into action. This book shows you techniques to make offerings people want, as well as make people want your offering.

Two Waves Books 2020

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The Catalyst

How to Change Anyone’s Mind
by Jonah Berger

Why read?

From the author of New York Times bestsellers Contagious and Invisible Influence comes a revolutionary approach to changing anyone’s mind.

Everyone has something they want to change. Marketers want to change their customers’ minds and leaders want to change organizations. Start-ups want to change industries and nonprofits want to change the world. But change is hard. Often, we persuade and pressure and push, but nothing moves. Could there be a better way?

This book is designed for anyone who wants to catalyze change. It provides a powerful way of thinking and a range of techniques that can lead to extraordinary results. Whether you’re trying to change one person, transform an organization, or shift the way an entire industry does business, this book will teach you how to become a catalyst.

288 pages, Simon & Schuster 2020

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No Filter

The Inside Story of Instagram
by Sarah Frier

Why read?

Award-winning reporter Sarah Frier reveals the never-before-told story of how Instagram became the most culturally defining app of the decade.

In 2010, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger released a photo-sharing app called Instagram, with one simple but irresistible feature: it would make anything you captured through your phone look more beautiful. The cofounders started to cultivate a community of photographers and artisans around the app, but it quickly went mainstream.
At its heart, No Filter is a human story, as Sarah Frier uncovers how the company’s decisions have fundamentally changed how we interact with the world around us. Frier examines how Instagram’s dominance acts as lens into our society today, highlighting our fraught relationship with technology, our desire for perfection, and the battle within tech for its most valuable commodity: our attention.

352 pages, Simon & Schuster 2020

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No Rules Rules

Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention
by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer

Why read?

Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings reveals for the first time the unorthodox culture behind one of the world’s most innovative, imaginative, and successful companies.
At Netflix, Hastings set new standards, valuing people over process, emphasizing innovation over efficiency, and giving employees context, not controls. At Netflix, there are no vacation or expense policies. At Netflix, adequate performance gets a generous severance, and hard work is irrel­evant. At Netflix, you don’t try to please your boss, you give candid feedback instead. At Netflix, employees don’t need approval, and the company pays top of market. When Hastings and his team first devised these unorthodox principles, the implications were unknown and untested. But in just a short period, their methods led to unparalleled speed and boldness, as Netflix quickly became one of the most loved brands in the world.

Drawing on hundreds of interviews with current and past Netflix employees from around the globe and never-before-told stories of trial and error from Hastings’s own career, No Rules Rules is the fascinating and untold account of the philosophy behind one of the world’s most innovative, imaginative, and successful companies.

320 pages, Penguin Press 2020

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Upstream

The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen
by Dan Heath

Why read?

New York Times bestselling author Dan Heath explores how to prevent problems before they happen, drawing on insights from hundreds of interviews with unconventional problem solvers.

So often in life, we get stuck in a cycle of response. We put out fires. We deal with emergencies. We stay downstream, handling one problem after another, but we never make our way upstream to fix the systems that caused the problems.
Upstream delivers practical solutions for preventing problems rather than reacting to them. How many problems in our lives and in society are we tolerating simply because we’ve forgotten that we can fix them?

220 pages, Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster 2020

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Samsung Rising

The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech
by Geoffrey Cain

Why read?

Based on years of reporting on Samsung for The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and Time, from his base in South Korea, and his countless sources inside and outside the company, Geoffrey Cain offers a penetrating look behind the curtains of the biggest company nobody in America knows. Seen for decades in tech circles as a fast follower rather than an innovation leader, Samsung today has grown to become a market leader in the United States and around the globe. They have captured one-quarter of the smartphone market and have been pushing the envelope on every front.
A sweeping insider account, Samsung Rising shows how a determined and fearless Asian competitor has become a force to be reckoned with.

416 pages, Currency 2020

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The Manager’s Path

A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change
by Camille Fournier

Why read?

Possibly the most important book for anyone heading into technical leadership at any level, whether starting out as a Tech Lead, or moving up to a CTO position. This book moves sequentially through the various levels of technical leader, and offers critical lessons for each one.

Managing a technical team, as you may well know, is a special practice, and requires more than a normal management role. This books is your companion every step of the way.

244 pages, O’Reilly Media 2017

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Managing Humans

Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager
By Michael Lopp

Why read?

Read hilarious stories with serious lessons that Michael Lopp extracts from his varied and sometimes bizarre experiences as a manager at Apple, Pinterest, Palantir, Netscape, Symantec, Slack, and Borland.

This book is full of stories based on companies in the Silicon Valley where people have been known to yell at each other and occasionally throw chairs. Whether you’re an aspiring manager, a current manager, or just wondering what manager does all day, there is a story in this book that will speak to you.

348 pages, Apress 2016

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The Unicorn Project

A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data
By Gene Kim

Why read?

The Unicorn Project reads like a fiction novel, following Maxine, a senior lead developer and architect, as she is exiled to the Phoenix Project as punishment for contributing to a payroll outage. She tries to survive in what feels like a heartless and uncaring bureaucracy and to work within a system where no one can get anything done without endless committees, paperwork, and approvals.

This book is a must read for anyone navigating a tech company, as an engineer or especially as a leader. Or any other role, for that matter.

352 pages, IT Revolution Press, 2019

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Managing the Unmanageable

Rules, Tools, and Insights for Managing Software People and Teams
By Mickey W. Mantle and Ron Lichty

Why read?

Managing the Unmanageable delves deep into software engineering teams, and the people within them. How to hire, how to motivate, and how to lead them to develop and deliver great products.

All too often, software development is deemed unmanageable. How can this be? Authors Mickey W. Mantle and Ron Lichty pose that you need to begin by understanding your people. This is the book to help you do that.

452 Pages, Addison-Wesley Professional, 2012

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97 Things Every Engineering Manager Should Know

A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data
By Camille Fournier

Why read?

Managing people is hard, and the industry as a whole is bad at it. Many managers lack the experience, training, tools, texts, and frameworks to do it well. From mentoring interns to working in senior management, this book will take you through the stages of management and provide actionable advice on how to approach the obstacles you’ll encounter as a technical manager.

From the same author as The Managers Path, Camille Fournier draws upon her deep experience as a technical leader and manager at different levels, to bring you insights and actionable advice to improve as a leader.

296 pages, O’Reilly Media 2019

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Team Topologies

Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow
By Matthew Skelton

Why read?

How do you build the best software team for your specific goals, culture, and needs? Team Topologies is a practical, step-by-step, adaptive model for organizational design and team interaction based on four fundamental team types and three team interaction patterns. It is a model that treats teams as the fundamental means of delivery, where team structures and communication pathways are able to evolve with technological and organizational maturity.

As a technical leader, being able to observe, assess, measure and manage the basic functions of our team is critical to your success, and the success of the team. This book is a critical handbook to get you started.

240 pages, It Revolution Press, 2019

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Predictably Irrational

The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
by Dan Ariely

Why read?

In this newly revised and expanded edition of the groundbreaking New York Times bestseller, Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. From drinking coffee to losing weight, from buying a car to choosing a romantic partner, we consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. Yet these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless. They’re systematic and predictable — making us predictably irrational.

400 pages, Harper 2009

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Blink

The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
by Malcom Gladwell

Why read?

Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant-in the blink of an eye-that actually aren’t as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work-in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others?

Blink reveals that great decision makers aren’t those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of “thin-slicing”-filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables.

206 pages, Back Bay Books pages 2007

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Principles

Life and Work
by Ray Dalio

Why read?

Ray Dalio, one of the world’s most successful investors and entrepreneurs, shares the unconventional principles that he’s developed, refined, and used over the past forty years to create unique results in both life and business — and which any person or organization can adopt to help achieve their goals.
While the book brims with novel ideas for organizations and institutions, Principles also offers a clear, straightforward approach to decision-making that Dalio believes anyone can apply, no matter what they’re seeking to achieve.

592 pages, Simon & Schuster 2017

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Thinking, Fast and Slow

by Daniel Kahneman

Why read?

In the international bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think.
Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives―and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble.

512 pages, Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2011

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Factfulness

Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World — and Why Things Are Better Than You Think
by Hans Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Ola Rosling

Why read?

When asked simple questions about global trends―what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school―we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers.

It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most.
Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future.

352 pages, Flatiron Books 2018

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Behave

The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
by Robert M. Sapolsky

Why read?

From the celebrated neurobiologist and primatologist, a landmark, genre-defining examination of human behavior, both good and bad, and an answer to the question: Why do we do the things we do?

Sapolsky’s storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: he starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person’s reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy.

800 pages, Penguin Press 2017

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Misbehaving

The Making of Behavioral Economics
by Richard H. Thaler

Why read?

Nobel laureate Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans―predictable, error-prone individuals. Misbehaving is his arresting, frequently hilarious account of the struggle to bring an academic discipline back down to earth―and change the way we think about economics, ourselves, and our world.

Traditional economics assumes rational actors. Early in his research, Thaler realized these Spock-like automatons were nothing like real people. Whether buying a clock radio, selling basketball tickets, or applying for a mortgage, we all succumb to biases and make decisions that deviate from the standards of rationality assumed by economists.
Laced with antic stories of Thaler’s spirited battles with the bastions of traditional economic thinking, Misbehaving is a singular look into profound human foibles. When economics meets psychology, the implications for individuals, managers, and policy makers are both profound and entertaining.

342 pages, W. W. Norton & Company 2016

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The Art of Choosing

by Sheena Iyengar

Why read?

Every day we make choices. Coke or Pepsi? Save or spend? Stay or go?

Whether mundane or life-altering, these choices define us and shape our lives. Sheena Iyengar asks the difficult questions about how and why we choose: Is the desire for choice innate or bound by culture? Why do we sometimes choose against our best interests? How much control do we really have over what we choose? Sheena Iyengar’s award-winning research reveals that the answers are surprising and profound. In our world of shifting political and cultural forces, technological revolution, and interconnected commerce, our decisions have far-reaching consequences.

368 pages, Twelve 2011

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Basic Economics

A Common Sense Guide to the Economy
by Thomas Sowell

Why read?

Basic Economics is a citizen’s guide to economics, written for those who want to understand how the economy works but have no interest in jargon or equations. Bestselling economist Thomas Sowell explains the general principles underlying different economic systems: capitalist, socialist, feudal, and so on. In readable language, he shows how to critique economic policies in terms of the incentives they create, rather than the goals they proclaim. With clear explanations of the entire field, from rent control and the rise and fall of businesses to the international balance of payments, this is the first book for anyone who wishes to understand how the economy functions.

704 pages, Basic Books 2014

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Naked Economics

Undressing the Dismal Science
by Charles Wheelan

Why read?

Demystifying buzzwords, laying bare the truths behind oft-quoted numbers, and answering the questions you were always too embarrassed to ask, the breezy Naked Economics gives you the tools to engage with pleasure and confidence in the deeply relevant, not so dismal science.
Wheelan gives you a dee-dive in to hot topics such as automation, trade, income inequality, and America’s rising debt. Ten years after the financial crisis, Naked Economics examines how policymakers managed the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

400 pages, W. W. Norton & Company 2019

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The Value of Everything

Making and Taking in the Global Economy
by Mariana Mazzucato

Why read?

The Value of Everything argues that American companies have for too long been valued according to the amount of wealth they capture for themselves rather than for the value they create for the economy. In fact, Pfizer, Amazon, and other companies are actually dependent on public money, spend their resources on boosting share prices and executive pay, and reap ever-expanding rewards without offering the market value.

384 pages, Penguin 2019

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Built to Last

Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Good to Great)
by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras

Why read?

Drawing upon a six-year research project at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Collins and Porras took eighteen truly exceptional and long-lasting companies — they have an average age of nearly one hundred years and have outperformed the general stock market by a factor of fifteen since 1926 — and studied each company in direct comparison to one of its top competitors. They examined the companies from their very beginnings to the present day — as start-ups, as midsize companies, and as large corporations. Throughout, the authors asked: “What makes the truly exceptional companies different from other companies?”

368 pages, Harper Business 2004

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Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition

How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant
by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne

Why read?

In this perennial bestseller, embraced by organizations and industries worldwide, globally preeminent management thinkers W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne challenge everything you thought you knew about the requirements for strategic success. The authors argue that cutthroat competition results in nothing but a bloody red ocean of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. Based on a study of 150 strategic moves (spanning more than 100 years across 30 industries), the authors argue that lasting success comes not from battling competitors but from creating “blue oceans” — untapped new market spaces ripe for growth.

320 pages, Harvard Business Review Press 2015

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Economic Facts and Fallacies

by Thomas Sowell

Why read?

In Economic Facts and Fallacies, Thomas Sowell exposes some of the most popular fallacies about economic issues in a lively manner that does not require any prior knowledge of economics. These fallacies include many beliefs widely disseminated in the media and by politicians, such as fallacies about urban problems, income differences, male-female economic differences, as well as economic fallacies about academia, about race, and about Third World countries.

Sowell shows that fallacies are not simply crazy ideas but in fact have a certain plausibility that gives them their staying power — and makes careful examination of their flaws both necessary and important.

304 pages, Basic Books 2011

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Zero to One

Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
by Peter Thiel & Blake Masters

Why read?

If you do what has never been done and you can do it better than anybody else, you have a monopoly — and every business is successful exactly insofar as it is a monopoly. But the more you compete, the more you become similar to everyone else. From the tournament of formal schooling to the corporate obsession with outdoing rivals, competition destroys profits for individuals, companies, and society as a whole.

Zero to One is about how to build companies that create new things. It draws on everything Peter Thiel has learned directly as a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir and then an investor in hundreds of startups, including Facebook and SpaceX. The single most powerful pattern Thiel has noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas. Ask not, what would Mark do? Ask: What valuable company is nobody building?

224 pages, Currency 2014

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The Great Fragmentation

And Why the Future of All Business Is Small
by Steve Sammartino

Why read?

The Great Fragmentation is a business survival manifesto for the technology revolution. As entrepreneurs and startups enabled by access to technology become genuine threats, existing businesses need to understand how to position themselves to survive and thrive.

As the world moves from the industrial era to the digital age, power is shifting and fragmenting. Power is no longer about might and ownership ― power in a digital world is about access.

This book discusses the history of work since the industrial revolution, and draws a clear trend that leads us into the future. Many of the changes mentioned in the book are already being realised. This is a must-read!

288 pages, Wiley 2014

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Rise of the Robots

Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future
by Martin Ford

Why read?

We all know that technology is getting eerily good at doing the things that humans have been doing for a long time. So, will robots eventually take over? Will we lose our jobs, or will new ones be created?

Artificial intelligence is already well on its way to making “good jobs” obsolete: many paralegals, journalists, office workers, and even computer programmers are poised to be replaced by robots and smart software. As progress continues, blue and white-collar jobs alike will evaporate, squeezing working- and middle-class families ever further.

Rise of the Robots is essential reading to understand what accelerating technology means for our economic prospects and for society as a whole.

368 pages, Basic Books 2016

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Superintelligence

Paths, Dangers, Strategies
by Nick Bostrom

Why read?

The question we’ve all been asking: Will AI really become all-powerful and take over the world? Nobody knows for sure, but this book offers a deeper insight into just how that might work, how we might get there, and what are the dangers along the way.

Superintelligence asks the questions: What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence? Will artificial agents save or destroy us? Nick Bostrom lays the foundation for understanding the future of humanity and intelligent life.

390 pages, Oxford University Press 2016

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It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work

by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson

Why read?

Long hours, an excessive workload, and a lack of sleep have become a badge of honor for modern professionals. But it should be a mark of stupidity, argue Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson.

Sadly, this isn’t just a problem for large organizations — individuals, contractors, and solopreneurs are burning themselves out the same way. The answer to better productivity isn’t more hours — it’s less waste and fewer things that induce distraction and persistent stress.

The authors have a notorious and impressive track record of running a successful multi-million dollar SaaS business, and also publishing fantastic books. So, take that as a sign that this one should find a place on your shelf.

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Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

How to drive your career and create a remarkable future
by Seth Godin

Why read?

As the world of business and technology changes around us, and ‘cogs in a machine’ jobs are being automated more and more, how do we remain relevant as individuals?

Linchpin digs deep into uncomfortable territory, but ultimately provides a brightly valuable perspective on work and career. Do you want to be replaceable? Or do you want to be a linchpin?

Linchpin is about becoming indispensable at work and breaking out of the scape of following the instruction manual.

This is an important read for anyone, and just as relevant for ‘right now’ as ‘the future’.

256 pages, Piatkus Books 2012

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Gigged

The End of the Job and the Future of Work
by Sarah Kessler

Why read?

One in three American workers is now a freelancer. This “gig economy” emerged out of the digital era and has revolutionized the way we do business. From the Uber driver who uses his own car to make some extra cash in the evenings, to the computer programmer who decides which projects she wants to work on for clients, the gig economy is bringing a new level of flexibility, and with it a number of new challenges too.

In the tradition of the great business narratives of our time, Gigged offers deeply-sourced, up-close-and-personal accounts of our new economy. Journalist Sarah Kessler follows a wide range of individuals from across the country to provide a nuanced look at how the gig economy is playing out in real-time.

Kessler wades through the hype and hyperbole to tackle the big questions: What does the future of work look like? Will the millennial generation do as well as their parents? How can we all find meaningful, well-paid work?

288 pages, St. Martin’s Press 2018

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The Future of Work

Attract New Talent, Build Better Leaders, and Create a Competitive Organization
by Jacob Morgan

Why read?

Throughout the history of business employees had to adapt to managers and managers had to adapt to organizations. In the future this is reversed with managers and organizations adapting to employees. This means that in order to succeed and thrive organizations must rethink and challenge everything they know about work.

The Future of Work digs in to the dynamic of employers and employees, managers and leaders, and explores how we need to begin to view these relationships into the future.

Reading this book will help you to think more critically about how you structure your teams and your business, and how professional relationships will begin to transform.

256 pages, Wiley 2014

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The Little Book of Beyond Budgeting

A New Operating System for Organisations: What it is and Why it Works
by Steve Morlidge

Why read?

It’s natural for business practices to evolve or transform over time. One example of this is the agile methodology. We design and discover new ways to move, but often there are other business practices that get left behind. Over time this can hold a business back.

Budgeting and business accounting is certainly one of those areas. Who thinks about it these days? Well, as it turns out, as businesses become more agile, the whole suite of business processes need to be redesigned too, including accounting.

The Little Book of Beyond Budgeting is an accountant-cum-entrepreneur’s handbook to help entrepreneurs navigate this very topic.

This small but serious handbook fills in the gaps in awareness and understanding by answering the question what is Beyond Budgeting? in a clear and succinct way to help managers make informed choices about business processes, as an alternative to blindly copying what has always been done before.

90 pages, Troubador Publishing Ltd 2017

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Human Centered Design Toolkit

An Open-Source Toolkit To Inspire New Solutions in the Developing World
by IDEO

Why read?

In 2009, IDEO designed and launched the HCD Toolkit, a first-of-its-kind book that laid out how and why human-centred design can impact the social sector.

Over 150,000 copies of this book have been bought or downloaded by designers, entrepreneurs and innovators, just like you.

IDEO is certainly an authority on Design Thinking, and so this book is a natural choice to include in the collection. The toolkit offered in this book puts people back in the focus and pushes us to think about the person instead of the (perceived problem).

192 pages, IDEO 2009

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The Design Of Business

Why Design Thinking is the next competitive advantage
by Roger Martin

Why read?

The Design of Business takes a very business-oriented perspective to employ Design Thinking practices. It’s an important book to read if you’re a leader or owner of a business.

Roger Martin introduces the idea of a knowledge funnel as the process for businesses to innovate and solve problems.

He also poses that there are two main types of business thinking: analytical thinking, and intuitive thinking. Analytical thinking has gradually become more prevalent because it’s easier to measure. But, intuitive thinking has its place too.

208 Pages, Harvard Business Review Press; Third Edition edition 2009

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The Moment of Clarity

by Christian Madsbjerg & Mikkel B. Rasmussen

Why read?

In The Moment of Clarity, Christian Madsbjerg and Mikkel Rasmussen examine the business world’s assumptions about human behaviour and show how these assumptions can lead businesses off track.

But the authors chart a way forward. Using theories and tools from the human sciences — anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and psychology — The Moment of Clarity introduces a practical framework called sensemaking. Sensemaking’s nonlinear problem-solving approach gives executives a better way to understand business challenges involving shifts in human behaviour.

224 pages, Harvard Business Review Press 2014

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Hidden in Plain Sight

How to Create Extraordinary Products for Tomorrow’s Customers
by Jan Chipchase & Simon Steinhardt

Why read?

Hidden in Plain Sight takes a closer look at how consumers think and behave.

Not strictly focused on Design Thinking practices, but very much focused on exactly what drives consumers to make the choices they do, and demonstrates how all types of businesses can learn to see what is hidden in plain sight today, to create businesses tomorrow.

Jan Chipchase, named by Fortune as “one of the 50 smartest people in tech,” has travelled the world, studying people of all nations and their habits, paying attention to the ordinary things that we do every day and how they affect our buying decisions.

256 pages, Harper Business 2013

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The Art of Innovation

by Tom Kelley & Jonathan Littman

Why read?

In The Art of Innovation, Tom Kelley, partner at IDEO, takes readers behind the scenes of this wildly imaginative and energized company to reveal the strategies and secrets it uses to turn out hit after hit.

IDEO doesn’t buy into the myth of the lone genius working away in isolation, waiting for great ideas to strike. Kelley believes everyone can be creative, and the goal at his firm is to tap into that wellspring of creativity in order to make innovation a way of life.

320 pages, Currency 2001

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Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation

by Idris Mootee

Why read?

Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation presents a framework for design thinking that is relevant to business management, marketing, and design strategies and also provides a toolkit to apply concepts for immediate use in everyday work.

It explains how design thinking can bring about creative solutions to solve complex business problems. Organized into five sections, this book provides an introduction to the values and applications of design thinking, explains design thinking approaches for eight key challenges that most businesses face, and offers an application framework for these business challenges through exercises, activities, and resources.

224 pages, Wiley 2013

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Testing Business Ideas

by David J. Bland & Alexander Osterwalder

Why read?

7 out of 10 new products fail to deliver on expectations. Testing Business Ideas aims to reverse that statistic. In the tradition of Alex Osterwalder’s global bestseller Business Model Generation, this practical guide contains a library of hands-on techniques for rapidly testing new business ideas.

368 pages, Wiley 2019

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How to Speak Machine

Computational Thinking for the Rest of Us
by John Maeda

Why read?

John Maeda is one of the world’s preeminent interdisciplinary thinkers on technology and design. In How to Speak Machine, he offers a set of simple laws that govern not only the computers of today, but the unimaginable machines of the future.

How to Speak Machine provides a coherent framework for today’s product designers, business leaders, and policymakers to grasp this brave new world. Drawing on his wide-ranging experience from engineering to computer science to design, Maeda shows how businesses and individuals can identify opportunities afforded by technology to make world-changing and inclusive products — while avoiding the pitfalls inherent to the medium.

240 pages, Portfolio 2019

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What You Do Is Who You Are

How to Create Your Business Culture
by Ben Horowitz

Why read?

Ben Horowitz has long been fascinated by history, and particularly by how people behave differently than you’d expect. The time and circumstances in which they were raised often shapes them — yet a few leaders have managed to shape their times. In What You Do Is Who You Are, he turns his attention to a question crucial to every organization: how do you create and sustain the culture you want?

What You Do Is Who You Are is a journey through culture, from ancient to modern. Along the way, it answers a question fundamental to any organization: Who are we? How do people talk about us when we’re not around? How do we treat our customers? Are we there for people in a pinch? Can we be trusted?

288 pages, Harper Business 2019

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Shape Up

by Ryan Singer

Why read?

This book is the latest gem — written by one of the founders of Basecamp. Shape Up focuses on product development teams that face the issue of shaping, building and shipping. The book gives teams language and specific techniques to address the risks and unknowns at each stage of the product development process. Full of eye-opening insights, Shape Up will help you break free of “best practices” that aren’t really working, think deeper about the right problems, and start shipping meaningful projects your team can celebrate.

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Range

Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
by David Epstein

Why read?

Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate practice as possible. But a closer look at research on the world’s top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule.

David Epstein examined the world’s most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters and scientists. He discovered that in most fields — especially those that are complex and unpredictable — generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel. Generalists often find their path late, and they juggle many interests rather than focusing on one. They’re also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can’t see.

352 pages, Riverhead Books 2019

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Nine Lies About Work

A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World Hardcover
by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall

Why read?

You crave feedback. Your organization’s culture is the key to its success. Strategic planning is essential. Your competencies should be measured and your weaknesses shored up. Leadership is a thing.

These may sound like basic truths of our work lives today. But actually, they’re lies. As strengths guru and bestselling author Marcus Buckingham and Cisco Leadership and Team Intelligence head Ashley Goodall show in this provocative, inspiring book, there are some big lies — distortions, faulty assumptions, wrong thinking — that we encounter every time we show up for work. Nine lies, to be exact.

This book leads to some free thinking about the way we do our jobs and how we can approach what we do in a different way.

256 pages, Harvard Business Review Press 2019

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Loonshots

How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries
by Safi Bahcall

Why read?

What do James Bond and Lipitor have in common? What can we learn about human nature and world history from a glass of water?

In Loonshots, physicist and entrepreneur Safi Bahcall reveals a surprising new way of thinking about the mysteries of group behavior that challenges everything we thought we knew about nurturing radical breakthroughs.

Drawing on the science of phase transitions, Bahcall shows why teams, companies, or any group with a mission will suddenly change from embracing wild new ideas to rigidly rejecting them, just as flowing water will suddenly change into brittle ice. Mountains of print have been written about culture. Loonshots identifies the small shifts in structure that control this transition, the same way that temperature controls the change from water to ice.

368 pages, St. Martin’s Press 2019

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Design for How People Think

Using Brain Science to Build Better Products
by John Whalen

Why read?

User experience doesn’t happen on a screen; it happens in the mind, and the experience is multidimensional and multisensory. This practical book will help you uncover critical insights about how your customers think so you can create products or services with an exceptional experience.

Corporate leaders, marketers, product owners, and designers will learn how cognitive processes from different brain regions form what we perceive as a singular experience. Author John Whalen shows you how anyone on your team can conduct “contextual interviews” to unlock insights. You’ll then learn how to apply that knowledge to design brilliant experiences for your customers.

240 pages, O’Reilly Media 2019

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Outcomes Over Output

Why customer behavior is the key metric for business success
by Joshua Seiden

Why read?

In the old days, when we made physical products, setting project goals wasn’t that hard. But in today’s service- and software-driven world, “done” is less obvious. When is Amazon done? When is Google done? Or Facebook? In reality, services powered by digital systems are never done. So then how do we give teams a goal that they can work on? Mostly, we simply ask teams to build features — but features are the wrong way to go. We often build features that create no value. Instead, we need to give teams an outcome to achieve. Using outcomes creates focus and alignment. It eliminates needless work. And it puts the customer at the center of everything you do. Setting goals as outcomes sounds simple, but it can be hard to do in practice. This book is a practical guide to using outcomes to guide the work of your team.

76 pages, Independently published 2019

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Talking to Strangers

What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know
by Malcom Gladwell

Why read?

Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers — and why they often go wrong.

Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world.

Gladwell brilliantly argues that we should stop assuming, realize no one’s transparent and understand that behavior is tied to unseen circumstances.

400 pages, Little, Brown and Company 2019

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Lean Analytics

Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster
by Benjamin Yoskovitz and Alistair Croll

Gregor Meyenberg — Head of Product at Event Inc says

I have read a few of the lean books (of course including Lean Startup from Eric Ries), but this one is probably the one where I got the most out of it. As a PM I always worked a lot with data to better understand the user. This book taught me which KPI matter in which phase of a product life cycle and how to find that one metric. I still use it from time to time as a reference.

More book recommendations by Gregor Meyenberg

440 pages, O’Reilly Media 2013

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Running Lean

Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works
by Ash Maurya

Florian Gansemer — Managing Director at kununu engage says

Everyone is talking about the book „Lean Startup“ which of course started this trend. I like the version of Ash Maurya better because it’s more practical and gives you step-by-step information about HOW you actually start and validate your business. It’s full of case studies and tools on how you ensure you’re actually solving a real existing problem and how to validate that you’re on the right way to solve it.

More book recommendations by Florian Gansemer

240 pages, O’Reilly Media 2012

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The Lean Entrepreneur

How Visionaries Create Products, Innovate with New Ventures, and Disrupt Markets
by Brant Cooper & Patrick Vlaskovits

Clement Kao — Product Manager at Blend says

Much of product management rests on the value proposition, which is essential “the bundle of benefits you’ll grant to the customer at some proposed cost.” Given that the viability of the value proposition isn’t knowable until you test it with customers, Cooper and Vlaskovits provide clear frameworks for how to test the value proposition. I found this book incredibly helpful in framing my approach to validating my value proposition hypotheses. By investing time upfront to understand the customer, you’ll save time later by ensuring that you don’t build the wrong product.

“A sprawling overview of some of the biggest ideas in the start-up world.”
— Seth Godin (Author The Icarus Deception)

More book recommendations by Clement Kao

224 pages, Wiley 2016

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The Principles of Product Development Flow

Second Generation Lean Product Development
by Don Reinersten

Barry O’Reilly — Author, Speaker and Founder says

Product Development, Economics and Work Flow all rolled into one. Groundbreaking work. This book challenges an awful lot of fashionable ideas on improving product development processes. It provides a vast number of very solid principles that could make a big difference for almost any product development organization, from beginners to the most advanced. It offers a fundamentally different way of thinking about product development processes. Don’t read it if you are content with business as usual!

More book recommendations by Barry O’Reilly

304 pages, Wiley 2009

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Treasure Roadmap

How to turn your idea into a successful business
by Momčilo Dakić

Opinion by the author

This detailed roadmap will show you how to select, define, launch, refine, and make money from your idea. You will read the book all in one breath and use it over and over again to seek advice regardless of the stage of your business development. This book will lead you to financial and personal excellence. The book offers a set of tools emerging from lean start-up, design thinking, and agile software development that are revolutionizing how new ideas are created, refined and brought to market.

More book recommendations by Momčilo Dakić

163 pages, Amazon Digital Services LLC 2019

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Validating Product Ideas

Through Lean User Research
by Tomer Sharon

Christian Becker — Founder of leanproductable says

When I started with product management it was usual that any research had to run through the marketing department. I had to write a lengthy briefing, then the marketing department would give advice on how to answer the question (most likely after consulting one of their suppliers) and come back with a price and timeline. After freeing the budget, the supplier could get going and after another couple of weeks, they presented some slides with data. Impact on the product was close to zero — simply because the friction between the actual question at hand and the market research was way too high. I think that every product manager should be able to do research independently. Tomer’s book is a great start with some hands-on advice on how to get going.

More book recommendations by Christian Becker

344 pages, Rosenfeld 2016

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The Ride of a Lifetime

Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company
by Robert Iger

Why read?

This book is about the relentless curiosity that has driven Iger for forty-five years, since the day he started as the lowliest studio grunt at ABC. It’s also about thoughtfulness and respect, and a decency-over-dollars approach that has become the bedrock of every project and partnership Iger pursues, from a deep friendship with Steve Jobs in his final years to an abiding love of the Star Wars mythology.

272 pages, Random House 2019

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The Man Who Solved the Market

How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution
by Gregory Zuckerman

Why read?

Gregory Zuckerman, the bestselling author of The Greatest Trade Ever and The Frackers, answers the question investors have been asking for decades: How did Jim Simons do it?
The Man Who Solved the Market is a portrait of a modern-day Midas who remade markets in his own image, but failed to anticipate how his success would impact his firm and his country. It’s also a story of what Simons’s revolution means for the rest of us.

384 pages, Portfolio 2019

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Bad Blood

Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
by John Carreyrou

Why read?

The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of Theranos, the one-time multibillion-dollar biotech startup founded by Elizabeth Holmes — now the subject of the HBO documentary The Inventor — by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end.

352 pages, Knopf 2018

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Outliers

The Story of Success
by Malcolm Gladwell

In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of “outliers” — the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?

336 pages, Back Bay Books 2011

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Creativity, Inc.

Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
by Ed Catmull

Why read?

While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. Ben Horowitz analyzes the problems that confront leaders every day, sharing the insights he’s gained developing, managing, selling, buying, investing in, and supervising technology companies. A lifelong rap fanatic, he amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs, telling it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in.

368 pages, Bantam Press 2014

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Billion Dollar Whale

The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World
by Bradley Hope

Why read?

In 2009, a chubby, mild-mannered graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business named Jho Low set in motion a fraud of unprecedented gall and magnitude — one that would come to symbolize the next great threat to the global financial system. Over a decade, Low, with the aid of Goldman Sachs and others, siphoned billions of dollars from an investment fund — right under the nose of global financial industry watchdogs. Low used the money to finance elections, purchase luxury real estate, throw champagne-drenched parties, and even to finance Hollywood films like The Wolf of Wall Street.

416 pages, Hachette Books 2019

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Indistractable

How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life
by Nir Eyal

Why read?

In his new book Nir Eyal — the author of the Product Management classic “Hooked” — reveals the hidden psychology driving us to distraction. He describes why solving the problem is not as simple as swearing off our devices: Abstinence is impractical and often makes us want more.

Eyal lays bare the secret of finally doing what you say you will do with a four-step, research-backed model. Indistractable reveals the key to getting the best out of technology, without letting it get the best of us.

300 pages, BenBella Books 2019

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Essentialism

The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
by Greg McKeown

Why read?

The Way of the Essentialist isn’t about getting more done in less time. It’s about getting only the right things done. It is not a time management strategy, or a productivity technique. It is a systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so we can make the highest possible contribution towards the things that really matter.

272 pages, Currency 2014

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The Productivity Project

Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy
by Chris Bailey

Why read?

A fresh, personal, and entertaining exploration of a topic that concerns all of us: how to be more productive at work and in every facet of our lives.

The Productivity Project — and the lessons Chris learned — are the result of that year-long journey. Among the counterintuitive insights Chris Bailey will teach you:
· slowing down to work more deliberately;
· shrinking or eliminating the unimportant;
· the rule of three;
· striving for imperfection;
· scheduling less time for important tasks;
· the 20-second rule to distract yourself from the inevitable distractions;
· and the concept of productive procrastination.

304 pages, Currency 2017

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Deep Work

Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
by Cal Newport

Who should read this book?

Deep work is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world.

Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy.

304 pages, Grand Central Publishing 2016

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The Bullet Journal Method

Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future
by Ryder Carroll

Why read?

The Bullet Journal Method is about much more than organizing your notes and to-do lists. It’s about what Carroll calls “intentional living”: weeding out distractions and focusing your time and energy in pursuit of what’s truly meaningful, in both your work and your personal life. It’s about spending more time with what you care about, by working on fewer things. His new book shows you how to…

* Track the past: Using nothing more than a pen and paper, create a clear and comprehensive record of your thoughts.

* Order the present: Find daily calm by tackling your to-do list in a more mindful, systematic, and productive way.

* Design the future: Transform your vague curiosities into meaningful goals, and then break those goals into manageable action steps that lead to big change.

320 pages, Portfolio 2018

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Extreme Productivity

Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours
by Robert C. Pozen

Why read?

Robert C. Pozen, one of the business world’s most successful — and productive — executives, reveals the surprising secrets to workplace productivity and high performance. Extreme Productivity is an essential handbook for every business professional, empowering them with proven methods for prioritizing efficiently and maximizing time at work, while leading a full and productive personal life as well.

304 pages, HarperBusiness 2012

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Getting Things Done

The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
by David Allen

Why read?

Since it was first published almost fifteen years ago, David Allen’s Getting Things Done has become one of the most influential business books of its era, and the ultimate book on personal organization. “GTD” is now shorthand for an entire way of approaching professional and personal tasks, and has spawned an entire culture of websites, organizational tools, seminars, and offshoots.

352 pages, Penguin Books 2015

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Antifragile

Things That Gain from Disorder
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Why read?

Antifragile is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand.

544 pages, Incerto 2014

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The EQ Interview

Finding Employees with High Emotional Intelligence
by Adele B. Lynn

Why read?

With a growing body of research showing that Emotional Intelligence is one of the key indicators of success, smart hiring managers know that choosing employees based on their EQ makes sense. What they don’t know is the best way to do it. The EQ Interview gives readers the skills and understanding they need to assess candidates’ emotional intelligence and ensure that they’re the right fit for the job. This practical guide explains the five areas of emotional intelligence, and how these competencies enhance job performance.

192 pages, Amacom 2008

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Pixels and Place

Connecting Human Experience Across Physical and Digital Spaces
by Kate O’Neill

Why read?

The distinction between “online” and “offline,” between “digital” and “physical,” once seemingly unambiguous, has begun to blur thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones and personal location data, ad and experience targeting, connected devices, wearable technology, the Internet of Things, and additive capabilities like 3-D printing. The biggest business opportunities for innovative experiences, according to digital marketing expert and “tech humanist” Kate O’Neill, will come from blending the physical and digital worlds intentionally to create a meaningful and integrated human experience.

“Kate O’Neill’s Pixels and Place is a must read for those of us fascinated by the tidal shift taking place around us in the way we envision the world and our experiences within it.”
— Mitch Lowe, Founding executive of Netflix

224 pages, KO Insights 2016

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Tech Humanist

How You Can Make Technology Better for Business and Better for Humans
by Kate O’Neill

Why read?

Technology drives the future we create. But are we steering that technology in directions that create that future in the best way, for most people? In her new book “Tech Humanist,” Kate O’Neill examines the intent, goals and avenues through which people create and distribute technology, and the amplifying effects technology has on the values the organizations that deploy it. O’Neill defines a new model of business leader — the “tech humanist” — as developing honest assessments of organizational goals that move far beyond traditional P&L statements.

267 pages, Independently 2018

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Product Roadmaps Relaunched

How to Set Direction while Embracing Uncertainty
by C. Todd Lombardo, Bruce McCarthy, Evan Ryan & Michael Connors

Why read?

This book is written for product people. If you’re wondering if that’s you, we’re referring to the individual or individuals responsible for developing, prioritizing, and rallying support for the development of a product or service. This role has been compared to a mini CEO, but we think that overstates the level of control most product people have.

272 pages, O’Reilly Media 2017

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Product Research Rules

A Foundational Guide for Accurate, Accelerated User Research That Delivers Insights in Four Simple Steps
by C Todd Lombardo and Aras Bilgen

Why pre-order?

This book examines how your company should practice user research in the modern era. Ideal for product professionals inside organizations that create digital products, this book makes UX research techniques accessible for a broader swath of product teams. While UX professionals might enjoy this book, it’s for the others on their teams who may benefit the most from this information. Learn how user research has become a required skill across roles and industries. Explore modern user research practices now in wide use in the field. Gain a solid theoretical foundation for user research, as well as a wealth of practical content, real-world examples, and tools.

Super Thinking

The Big Book of Mental Models
by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann

Why read?

The world’s greatest problem-solvers, forecasters, and decision-makers all rely on a set of frameworks and shortcuts that help them cut through complexity and separate good ideas from bad ones. They’re called mental models, and you can find them in dense textbooks on psychology, physics, economics, and more. Or, you can just read Super Thinking, a fun, illustrated guide to every mental model you could possibly need.

352 pages, Portfolio 2019

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Analog In, Digital Out

Voices That Matter
by Brendan Dawes

Why read?

Brendan’s book offers a deeply personal, approachable and honest account of his creative process and how he comes up with great ideas and designs for interactive experiences. This book is a true joy to read that’s infused with clever visual punctuation to every page and story. Destined to become a classic design tome that will help readers tap into their own processes and creativity.

336 pages, New Riders 2006

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Understanding Design Thinking, Lean, and Agile

by Jonny Schneider

Why read?

High-performance organizations, and the people who lead them, rarely hold onto one methodology or mindset alone. In this book, Jonny gives you the key insights to get started. What each is, the benefits and limitations, how and where to get started. Save yourself the cost of a certificate, and learn by doing and applying the lessons within.

“While powerful concepts, Design Thinking, Lean, and Agile are heavily misunderstood. Jonny elegantly breaks down the real meaning behind these terms, and tells you how they can be used effectively to create great products. It’s a must read for every organization.”
— Melissa Perri (Keynote speaker, teacher, and author of Escaping The Build Trap.)

76 pages, O’Reilly 2013

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The Breakthrough Speaker

How to Build a Public Speaking Career
by Adam Smiley Poswolsky

Why read?

Public speaking has become an essential life skill. The lessons in this book will help new speakers looking to break into the corporate speaking industry, as well as entrepreneurs, creatives, and influencers who want to gain exposure, build their personal brand, and make a greater impact. This practical guide provides helpful lessons, tools, interviews, and workbook-style exercises for speakers to start earning money from sharing their story.

361 pages, 20s & 30s Press 2018

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TED Talks

The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking
by Chris Anderson

Why read?

This guide explains how the miracle of powerful public speaking is achieved, and equips you to give it your best shot. There is no set formula, but there are tools that can empower any speaker.

390 pages, Mariner Books 2016

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Unleash the Power of Storytelling

Win Hearts, Change Minds, Get Results
by Rob Biesenbach

Why this book?

The market is flooded with a dizzying array of books, experts, and resources on business storytelling. This book cuts through the hype to clarify and demystify the storytelling process.

Unleash the Power of Storytelling offers step-by-step instructions for finding, shaping and telling powerful stories. You’ll learn about the essential ingredients that go into any good story and how to avoid common storytelling pitfalls.

178 pages, Eastlawn Media 2018

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Speak With No Fear

Go from a nervous, nauseated, and sweaty speaker to an excited, energized, and passionate presenter
by Mike Acker

When to read this book?

When you think of public speaking, do you get nervous, anxious, or even sweaty? Would you prefer never to give a presentation?Do you want to gain confidence in your communication and beyond?

Through this book you will learn 7 strategies you can begin today. These strategies will give you a new perspective, they will prepare you, and they will give you actions to practice. As you implement these strategies, your fear will begin to fade.

181 pages, Advance, Coaching & Consulting 2019

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The Storyteller’s Secret

From TED Speakers to Business Legends, Why Some Ideas Catch On and Others Don’t
by Carmine Gallo

Why read?

In The Storyteller’s Secret, Gallo offers lessons from a range of visionary leaders, each of whom cites storytelling as a crucial ingredient in success. A good story can spark action and passion; it can revolutionize the way people think and spur them to chase their dreams. Isn’t it time you shared yours?

288 pages, St. Martin’s Griffina 2017

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How to Deliver a TED Talk

Secrets of the World’s Most Inspiring Presentations
by Jeremey Donovan

Why read?

How to Deliver a TED Talk provides more than 100 invaluable tips — everything from opening with an explicit statement of audience benefits to framing your idea as an action-outcome response to a question worth asking. Whether you’re presenting to an audience of 1 or 1,000, this book is an indispensable resource for any public speaker.

240 pages, McGraw-Hill Education 2013

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How to Own the Room

Women and the Art of Brilliant Speaking
by Viv Groskop

Why read?

Most books about public speaking don’t tell you what to do when you open your mouth and nothing comes out. And they don’t tell you how to get over the performance anxiety that most people naturally have. They don’t tell you what to do in the moments when you are made, as a woman, to feel small. They don’t tell you how to own the room. This book does.

240 pages, Collins 2019

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Words That Change Minds

The 14 Patterns for Mastering the Language of Influence
by Shelle Rose Charvet

Why read?

Do you work and live with people who are hard to convince? Who dismiss ideas before even thinking about them?Do you want to know how to influence people, without being manipulative? Want to find out how people get motivated, make decisions, to be more persuasive with everyone?

Learn how to use the right words with the right people, and get through the “Communication Wall”

356 pages, Bloomanity LLC 2019

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Remote

Office Not Required
by Jason Fried & David H. Hansson

Why read?

Remote work increases the talent pool, reduces turnover, lessens the real estate footprint, and improves the ability to conduct business across multiple time zones, to name just a few advantages. As Fried and Hansson explain the challenges and unexpected benefits of this phenomenon, they show why — with a few controversial exceptions such as Yahoo — more businesses will want to promote this model of getting things done.

256 pages, Currency 2013

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Distributed Teams

The Art and Practice of Working Together While Physically Apart
by John O’Duinn

Why read?

Drawn from 26+ years working in distributed organizations, this book gathers what did — and did not — work from my own hard-learned lessons,as well as learnings from company founders, hedge fund managers,software developers, data scientists, accountants, book publishers, economists, political organizers, recruiters, military personnel, executive assistants, therapists and medical technicians.

335 pages, Release Mechanix 2018

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Working Remotely

The Telecommuter’s Guide to the Galaxy
by Tim Baran

Why read?

This book identifies the advantages of working from anywhere in the galaxy and explores how workers and employers can optimize productivity, streamline processes, and adopt best practices. If you’re considering working remotely or moving your practice to all all-remote workforce, check out this book for insight and recommendations to help you along the journey.

46 pages, Rocket Matter 2014

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The Year Without Pants

WordPress.com and the Future of Work
by Scott Berkun

Why read?

What happens when an old-school management guru leaves the books and lectures behind to lead a young team at a revolutionary company, with no email, no offices, and no rules? The answer is an amazing and entertaining book about the future of work. Employees work remotely, from wherever in the world they wish.

272 pages, Jossey-Bass 2013

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Reinventing Organizations

An Illustrated Invitation to Join the Conversation on Next-Stage Organizations
by Frederic Laloux & Etienne Appert

Why read?

The uplifting message of Reinventing Organizations has resonated with readers all over the world, and they have turned it, one conversation at a time, into a word-of-mouth phenomenon. The book has helped shift the conversation from what’s broken with management today to what’s possible. It is inspiring thousands of organizations — corporations and nonprofits, schools and hospitals — to adopt radically more powerful, soulful, and purposeful practices.

172 pages, Nelson Parker 2016

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The Digital Nomad Survival Guide

How to Successfully Travel the World While Working Remotely
by Peter Knudson & Katherine Conaway

Why read?

This book pulls together practical advice from our experience, conversations with 20+ successful digital nomads, and tips from hundreds of more nomads across 70+ countries. Included are packing lists, sample budgets, app recommendations, website suggestions, and more.

207 pages, 2017

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Work Together Anywhere

A Handbook on Working Remotely — Successfully — for Individuals, Teams, and Managers
by Lisette Sutherland & Kirsten Janene-Nelson

Why read?

In today’s modern global economy, telecommuting is no longer a novelty. Companies and organizations everywhere are embracing the game-changing benefits of allowing employees to work outside the office, and the results are profound: managers benefit by saving money and resources and by having access to talent outside their zip codes, while employees enjoy greater job opportunities, productivity, independence, and satisfaction — in part from the time saved not commuting. The reality is clear: working remotely can be a win-win for everyone.

519 pages, Collaboration Superpowers 2018

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The Remote Revolution

How the Location-Independent Workforce Changes the Way We Hire, Connect, and Succeed
by John Elston

Why read?

Is it hard to recruit exceptional talent? Are you struggling to retain and inspire the employees you have? It’s time to rethink hiring practices and examine a revolution that allows professionals to live and work remotely around the world, trading cubicles for experiences that leave them stimulated as employees and as people.

176 pages, Lioncrest Publishing 2017

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Influencing Virtual Teams

17 Tactics That Get Things Done with Your Remote Employees
by Hassan Osman

Why read?

In Influencing Virtual Teams you’ll get step-by-step tactics that you can implement straightaway with your team to improve your team’s engagement and commitment to doing their work.

“Smart, easy to read, and pragmatic. ‘Influencing Virtual Teams’ is now a must-read for all of my clients building remote teams.”
- Patrick Linton, Co-Founder, BoltonRemote

68 pages, CreateSpace Independent 2016

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Virtual Culture

The Way We Work Doesn’t Work Anymore, a Manifesto
by Bryan Miles

Why read?

It’s the twenty-first century, yet most companies maintain a twentieth-century corporate culture. Despite instant communication and collaboration through wireless computers and smartphones, employers needlessly rent or own office space. Bryan Miles has a reality check for you: the future of business is virtual, and it’s going to take more than technology upgrades for you to upgrade your workplace environment.

210 pages, Lioncrest Publishing 2018

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Interviewing Users

How to Uncover Compelling Insights
by Steve Portigal

Why read?

Interviewing is a foundational user research tool that people assume they already possess. Everyone can ask questions, right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Interviewing Users provides invaluable interviewing techniques and tools that enable you to conduct informative interviews with anyone. You’ll move from simply gathering data to uncovering powerful insights about people.

176 pages, Rosenfeld Media 2013

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UX Research

Practical Techniques for Designing Better Products
by Brad Nunnally and David Farkas

Why read?

One key responsibility of product designers and UX practitioners is to conduct formal and informal research to clarify design decisions and business needs. But there’s often mystery around product research, with the feeling that you need to be a research Zen master to gather anything useful. Fact is, anyone can conduct product research. With this quick reference guide, you’ll learn a common language and set of tools to help you carry out research in an informed and productive manner.

256 pages, O’Reilly Media 2016

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Talking to Humans

Success starts with understanding your customers
by Giff Constable, Frank Rimalovski and Tom Fishburne

Why read?

Talking to Humans is a practical guide to the qualitative side of customer development, an indispensable skill for vetting and improving any new startup or innovation. This book will teach you how to structure and run effective customer interviews, find candidates, and turn learnings into action.

88 pages, Giff Constable 2014

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The Mom Test

How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you
by Rob Fitzpatrick

Why read?

Talking to customers is one of the foundational skills of both Customer Development and Lean Startup. We all know we’re supposed to do it, but nobody seems willing to admit that it’s easy to screw up and hard to do right. This book is going to show you how customer conversations go wrong and how you can do better.

136 pages, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2013

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The UX Book

Process and Guidelines for Ensuring a Quality User Experience
by Rex Hartson and Pardha Pyla

Why read?

The UX Book comes with a very broad approach to user experience through its components―usability, usefulness, and emotional impact with special attention to lightweight methods such as rapid UX evaluation techniques and an agile UX development process. It includes real-world stories and contributions from accomplished UX practitioners and a practical guide to best practices and established principles in UX.

968 pages, Morgan Kaufmann 2012

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Lean UX

Designing Great Products with Agile Teams
by Jeff Gothelf & Josh Seiden

Why read?

You’ll learn how to drive the design in short, iterative cycles to assess what works best for the business and the user.

208 pages, O’Reilly Media 2016

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Applied Artificial Intelligence

A Handbook For Business Leaders
by Mariya Yao, Adelyn Zhou & Marlene Jia

Why read?

Applied Artificial Intelligence is a practical guide for business leaders who are passionate about leveraging machine intelligence to enhance the productivity of their organizations and the quality of life in their communities. If you want to drive innovation by combining data, technology, design, and people to solve real problems at an enterprise scale, this is your playbook.

175 pages, Topbots 2018

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Data Smart

Using Data Science to Transform Information into Insight
by John W. Foreman

Why read?

Most people are approaching data science all wrong. Here’s how to do it right. Data science is little more than using straight-forward steps to process raw data into actionable insight. And in Data Smart, author and data scientist John Foreman will show you how that’s done within the familiar environment of a spreadsheet.

“When Mr. Foreman interviewed for a job at my company, he arrived dressed in a ‘Kentucky Colonel’ kind of suit and spoke about nonsensical things like barbecue, lasers, and orange juice pulp. Then, he explained how to de-mystify and solve just about any complex ‘big data’ problem in our company with simple spreadsheets. No server clusters, mainframes, or Hadoop-a-ma-jigs. Just Excel. I hired him on the spot. After reading this book, you too will learn how to use math and basic spreadsheet formulas to improve your business or, at the very least, how to trick senior executives into hiring you as their data scientist.”
— Ben Chestnut, Founder & CEO of MailChimp

All rights reserved John W. Foreman

432 pages, Wiley 2013

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Data Science for Business

What You Need to Know about Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking
by Foster Provost & Tom Fawcett

Why read?

Written by renowned data science experts Foster Provost and Tom Fawcett, Data Science for Business introduces the fundamental principles of data science and walks you through the “data-analytic thinking” necessary for extracting useful knowledge and business value from the data you collect. This guide also helps you understand the many data-mining techniques in use today.

“A must-read resource for anyone who is serious about embracing the opportunity of big data.”
— Craig Vaughan, Global Vice President at SAP

414 pages, O’Reilly Media 2013

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The Creativity Code

Art and Innovation in the Age of AI
by Marcus du Sautoy

Why read?

Can a well-programmed machine do anything a human can―only better? Complex algorithms are choosing our music, picking our partners, and driving our investments. They can navigate more data than a doctor or lawyer and act with greater precision. For many years we’ve taken solace in the notion that they can’t create. But now that algorithms can learn and adapt, does the future of creativity belong to machines, too?

While most recent books on AI focus on the future of work, The Creativity Code moves us to the forefront of creative new technologies and offers a more positive and unexpected vision of our future cohabitation with machines. It challenges us to reconsider what it means to be human―and to crack the creativity code.

320 pages, Belknap Press 2019

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Designing Agentive Technology

AI That Works for People
by Christopher Noessel

Why read?

Advances in narrow artificial intelligence make possible agentive systems that do things directly for their users (like, say, an automatic pet feeder). They deliver on the promise of user-centred design, but present fresh challenges in understanding their unique promises and pitfalls. Designing Agentive Technology provides both a conceptual grounding and practical advice to unlock agentive technology’s massive potential.

All rights reserved Talks at Google

240 pages, Rosenfeld Media 2017

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Data Science for Executives

Leveraging Machine Intelligence to Drive Business ROI
by Nir Kaldero

Why read?

Leaders don’t have to be scientists to unlock the power of AI technology that is already radically altering the industrial landscape. If you’re ready to meet the challenges of this new revolution, this essential guide will help you take your business to the next level.

184 pages, Lioncrest Publishing 2018

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Blitzscaling

The lightning-fast path to building massively valuable companies
by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh.

Why read?

In this book, the LinkedIn Co-founder Reid Hoffmann and Chris Yeh share their secret of how to build a market-leading company with a growing business while outdoing competitors. They call it “Blitzscaling” — prioritizing speed over efficiency in the development of a company even in the face of uncertainty.

336 pages, Currency 2018

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Creative Confidence

Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All
by Tom Kelley & David Kelley

Why read?

Too often, companies and individuals assume that creativity and innovation are the domain of the “creative types.” But two of the leading experts in innovation, design, and creativity on the planet show us that each and every one of us is creative.

“The Kelley brothers offer simple but effective tools for the “I’m not creative” set — business leaders and professionals seeking the confidence to innovate.”
— JOHN MAEDA

304 pages, Currency 2013

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The Decision Book

Fifty models for strategic thinking
by Mikael Krogerus & Roman Tschäppeler

Why read?

Every day, we face the same questions: How do I make the right decision? How can I work more efficiently? And, on a more personal level, what do I want? This international bestseller distils into a single volume the fifty best decision-making models used that will help you tackle these important questions.

176 pages, W. W. Norton & Company 2018

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Talk like TED

The 9 public speaking secrets of the world’s top minds
by Carmine Gallo

Why read?

Ideas are the true currency of the 21st century, and Talk Like TED gives you a way to create presentations around the ideas that matter most to you, presentations that will energize your audience to spread those ideas, launch new initiatives, and reach your highest goals.

288 pages, St. Martin’s Griffin 2015

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Tribe of Mentors

Short Life Advice from the Best in the World
by Tim Ferriss

Why read?

This is the ultimate choose-your-own-adventure book — a compilation of tools, tactics, and habits from 130+ of the world’s top performers. From iconic entrepreneurs to elite athletes, from artists to billionaire investors, their short profiles can help you answer life’s most challenging questions, achieve extraordinary results, and transform your life.

624 pages, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2017

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Lateral Thinking

A Textbook of Creativity
by Edward de Bono

Why read?

Through a series of special techniques, in groups or working alone, Edward de Bono shows how to stimulate the mind in new and exciting ways. Soon you will be looking at problems from a variety of angles and offering up solutions that are as ingenious as they are effective. You will become much more productive and a formidable thinker in your own right.

272 pages, Penguin Life 2016

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What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business School

by Mark McCormack

My opinion

I bought this book at Heathrow Airport and fortunately, my flight was delayed because I was really surprised by this book from page one. The story of how McCormack founded one of the greatest sports marketing agencies in the world and the rules of his negotiation strategy were inspiring and insightful.

238 pages, Profile Books 2014

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Influence

How to Raise Your Profile, Manage Your Reputation and Get Noticed
by Warren Cass

My opinion

I recommend this book to everyone who wants to learn how to manage to become more visible in their work and community environment, without losing their authenticity and accountability.

270, Capstone 2017

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The Tyranny of the Butterfly

by Frank Schätzing

My opinion

In this new thriller by the German author Frank Schätzing, he outlines the scenario of a technology that will radically change our lives, with the potential to dramatically improve it — or destroy us all: artificial intelligence.

736 pages, Kiepenheuer & Witsch 2018

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Decode and Conquer

Answers to Product Management Interviews
by Lewis C. Lin

Why read?

Get Decode and Conquer, the world’s first book on preparing you for the product management (PM) interview. Author and professional interview coach, Lewis C. Lin provides you with an industry insider’s perspective on how to conquer the most difficult PM interview questions.

206 pages, Impact Interview 2013

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Atomic habits

An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
by James Clear

Why read?

No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving — every day. James Clear, one of the world’s leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviours that lead to remarkable results.

320 pages, Avery 2018

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Make time

How to focus on what matters every day
by Jake Knapp & John Zeratsky

Why read?

Productivity experts Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky have created a four-step framework that anyone can use, packed with more than 80 tactics to help you design your day around the things that matter.

304 pages, Bantam Press 2018

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A newsletter about making time for what matters, from Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky.

The Growth Handbook

by Intercom

Why read?

Growth isn’t a game of silver bullets or one size fits all solutions. It’s about connecting more people to the value of your product, so they become loyal, long-term, paying customers, who share it with others. The Growth Handbook features industry-tested advice for doing just that.

79 pages, Intercom 2018

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Solving Product Design Exercises

Questions & Answers
by Artiom Dashinsky

Why read?

Learn how to solve and present exercises, that top startups use to interview designers for product design and UI/UX roles.

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More design-related books

Prediction Machines

The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence
by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans & Avi Goldfarb

Why read?

In Prediction Machines, three eminent economists recast the rise of AI as a drop in the cost of prediction. With this single, masterful stroke, they lift the curtain on the AI-is-magic hype and show how basic tools from economics provide clarity about the AI revolution and a basis for action by CEOs, managers, policymakers, investors, and entrepreneurs.

“What does AI mean for your business? Read this book to find out.”
— Hal Varian, Chief Economist, Google

250 pages, Ingram Publisher Services 2018

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The Book of Why

The New Science of Cause and Effect
by Judea Pearl & Dana Mackenzie

Why read?

“Correlation is not causation.” This mantra, chanted by scientists for more than a century, has led to a virtual prohibition on causal talk. Today, that taboo is dead. The causal revolution, instigated by Judea Pearl and his colleagues, has cut through a century of confusion and established causality — the study of cause and effect — on a firm scientific basis.

432 pages, Basic Books 2018

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The Culture Code

The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups
by Daniel Coyle

Why read?

Coyle unlocks the secrets of highly successful groups and provides tomorrow’s leaders with the tools to build a cohesive, motivated culture.

304 pages, Bantam 2018

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More books about team development
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Measure what matters

How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs
by John Doerr & Larry Page

Why read?

Legendary venture capitalist John Doerr reveals how the goal-setting system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) has helped tech giants from Intel to Google achieve explosive growth — and how it can help any organization thrive.

320 pages, Portfolio 2018

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Sense and Respond

How Successful Organizations Listen to Customers and Create New Products Continuously
by Jeff Gothelf & Josh Seiden

Why read?

This engaging and practical book provides the crucial new operational and management model to help you and your organization win in a world of continuous change.

272 pages, Harvard Business Review Press 2017

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The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
by Ben Horowitz

Why read?

A lot of people talk about how great it is to start a business, but only Ben Horowitz is brutally honest about how hard it is to run one.

304 pages, HarperBusiness 2014

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Meaningful

The Story of Ideas That Fly
by Bernadette Jiwa

Why read?

A must read for any entrepreneur or marketer. It’s full of lots of “aha” moments with a concrete tool that you can implement immediately.

176 pages, Perceptive Press 2015

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Product Leadership

How Top Product Managers Launch Awesome Products and Build Successful Teams
by Richard Banfield, Martin Eriksson & Nate Walkingshaw

Why read?

In this book, you get insights from 50 interviews of the world’s top product managers how to launch great products and build successful product teams.

248 pages, O’Reilly Media 2017

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The Mythical Man-Month

Essays on Software Engineering
by Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

Why read?

With a blend of software engineering facts and thought-provoking opinions, Fred Brooks offers insight for anyone managing complex projects.

336 pages, Addison-Wesley Professional 1995

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Intercom on Product Management

by Des Traynor & John Collins

Why read?

This book by the team at Intercom is designed to help those working in the ever-evolving field of product management.

88 pages, Intercom 2015

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Hooked

How to Build Habit-Forming Products
by Nir Eyal & Ryan Hoover

Why read?

Do you wish your users couldn’t live without your product? Through a simple but powerful how-to guide Nir Eyal shows how to convert users that engage with a product into users who’ll return to it again and again. If you want to get a glimpse into the mind of users you should read this book.

256 pages, Portfolio 2014

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The Laws of Simplicity

Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life
by John Maeda

Why read?

Ten laws of simplicity for business, technology, and design that teach us how to need less but get more.

117 pages, The MIT Press 2006

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User Story Mapping

Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product
by Jeff Patton & Peter Economy

Who Should Read This Book?

Product managers and user experience practitioners in commercial product companies should read this book to help them bridge the gap between thinking about whole products and user experience.

328 pages, O’Reilly Media 2014

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Product Management Essentials

Tools and Techniques for Becoming an Effective Technical Product Manager
by Aswin Pranam

This book is for

Individuals who are eyeing a transition into a PM role or have just entered a PM role at a new organization for the first time. They currently hold positions as a software engineer, marketing manager, UX designer, or data analyst and want to move away from a feature-focused view to a high-level strategic view of the product vision.

174 pages, Apress 2017

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Cracking the PM Interview

How to Land a Product Manager Job in Technology
by Gayle Laakmann McDowell & Jackie Bavaro

Why read?

This book will teach you how to answer questions like “How many pizzas are delivered in Manhattan?” or “How do you design an alarm clock for the blind?” and more.

364 pages, CareerCup 2013

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The Design of Everyday Things

Revised and Expanded Edition
by Don Norman

Why read?

The Design of Everyday Things is a powerful primer on how — and why — some products satisfy customers while others only frustrate them.

368 pages, Basic Book 2013

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The Product Manager Interview

164 Actual Questions and Answers
by Lewis C. Lin & Teng Lu

Why read?

The book contains fully solved solutions so readers can learn, improve and do their best at the PM interview.

300 pages, Impact Interview 2017

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Help the Helper

Building a Culture of Extreme Teamwork
by Kevin Pritchard, John Eliot

Why read?

Help the Helper will show you how to put a certain level of teamwork to work in your business, to build a cul­ture that recognizes and rewards those who help the helper — even when they don’t have sexy statistics.

256 pages, Portfolio 2012

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Tribal Leadership

Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization
by Dave Logan, John King & Halee Fischer-Wright

What’s this book about?

This book gives an amazingly insightful perspective on how people interact and succeed.

320 pages, HarperBusiness 2011

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The Wisdom of Teams

Creating the High-Performance Organization
by Jon R. Katzenbach

Why read?

Comprehensive and proven effective, The Wisdom of Teams is the classic primer on making teams a powerful tool for success in today’s global marketplace.

352 pages, HarperBusiness 2006

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Debugging Teams

Better Productivity through Collaboration
by Brian W. Fitzpatrick & Ben Collins-Sussman

What’s this book about?

The goal of this book is to help programmers become more effective and efficient at creating software by improving their ability to understand, communicate with, and collaborate with other people

190 pages, O’Reilly Media 2015

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Clear Leadership

Sustaining Real Collaboration and Partnership at Work
by Gervase Bushe

Who is the author?

In 2016 Gervase was added to HR Magazine’s (UK) list of the 30 Most Influential Thinkers in people strategy in the world.

228 pages, Nicholas Brealey 2010

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Team of Teams

New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World
by Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman & Chris Fussell

Why this book might be interesting for you…

What if you could combine the agility, adaptability, and cohesion of a small team with the power and resources of a giant organization?

304 pages, Portfolio 2015

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Team Turnarounds

A Playbook for Transforming Underperforming Teams
by Joe Frontiera & Daniel Leidl

Why read?

Learn how any manager can turn a struggling team into business champs.

272 pages, Jossey-Bass 2012

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Peopleware

Productive Projects and Teams
by Tom DeMarco & Tim Lister

Why read?

Few books in computing have had as profound an influence on software management as Peopleware.

272 pages, Addison-Wesley Professional 2013

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The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork

Embrace Them and Empower Your Team
by John C. Maxwell

Learn how…

…the Law of High Morale inspired a 50-year-old man who couldn’t even swim to train for the toughest triathlon in the world.

288 pages, Thomas Nelson 2013

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Agile Retrospectives

Making Good Teams Great
by Esther Derby & Diana Larsen

Why read?

Derby and Larsen show you the tools, tricks, and tips you need to fix the problems you face on a software development project on an on-going basis.

178 pages, Pragmatic Bookshelf 2006

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Lean In

Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
by Sheryl Sandberg

Why read?

The #1 international best seller: In this book, Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, reignited the conversation around women in the workplace.

240 pages, Knopf 2013

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The Captain Class

The Hidden Force That Creates the World’s Greatest Teams
by Sam Walker

Why read?

Because this might be one of THE business books of 2018. From the founding editor of The Wall Street Journal’s sports section comes a bold new theory of leadership drawn from the elite captains who inspired their teams to achieve extraordinary success.

368 pages, Random House Trade Paperbacks 2018

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The Amazon Way

14 Leadership Principles Behind the World’s Most Disruptive Company
by John Rossman

Why read?

If you are interested in innovating and creating a customer-focused culture like Amazon? Read this book!

172 pages, Clyde Hill Publishing 2016

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Yes to the Mess

Surprising Leadership Lessons from Jazz
by Frank J. Barrett

When should I read this book?

… when you want to know what Duke Ellington and Miles Davis can teach us about leadership and when you want to learn how to cope when you are faced with complexity and constant change at work. In this insightful book, Frank J. Barrett gives you a seminar on collaboration and complexity and on how to improvise.

240 pages, Harvard Business Review Press 2012

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Leadership BS

Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time
by Jeffrey Pfeffer

Why read?

The author of Power, Stanford business school professor, and a leading management thinker offers a hard-hitting dissection of the leadership industry and ways to make workplaces and careers work better.

272 pages, HarperBusiness 2015

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Becoming Steve Jobs

The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader
by Brent Schlender, Rick Tetzeli

Why read?

The #1 New York Times bestselling biography of how Steve Jobs became the most visionary CEO in history.

465 pages, Sceptre 2015

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Work Rules!

Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead
by Laszlo Bock

Why this book is a must-read

From the visionary head of Google’s innovative People Operations comes a groundbreaking inquiry into the philosophy of work-and a blueprint for attracting the most spectacular talent to your business and ensuring that they succeed.

416 pages, Twelve 2015

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The Outsiders

Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success
by William N. Thorndike

What’s this book about?

What makes a successful CEO? Most people call to mind a familiar definition: “a seasoned manager with deep industry expertise.” Others might point to the qualities of today’s so-called celebrity CEOs — charisma, virtuoso communication skills, and a confident management style. But what really matters when you run an organization? What is the hallmark of exceptional CEO performance? Quite simply, it is the returns for the shareholders of that company over the long term.

272 pages, Harvard Business Review Press 2012

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Good Strategy Bad Strategy

The Difference and Why It Matters
by Richard Rumelt

Why read?

This book clears out the mumbo jumbo and muddled thinking underlying too many strategies and provides a clear way to create and implement a powerful action-oriented strategy for the real world

322 pages, Profile Books 2017

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Leaders Eat Last

Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t
by Simon Sinek

Why read?

In this book, the renowned leadership expert Simon Sinek is continuing his bold move to inspire people to do the things that inspire them.

368 pages, Portfolio 2017

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Redesigning Leadership

Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life
by John Maeda & Rebecca J Bermont

What’s this book about?

Lessons for a new generation of leaders on teamwork, meetings, conversations, free food, social media, apologizing, and other topics.

80 pages, MIT University Press Group Ltd 2011

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Emotionally Intelligent Leadership

A Guide for Students
by Marcy Levy Shankman, Scott J. Allen & Paige Haber-Curran

Why read?

…because this is an excellent book for students which explores the connection between emotional intelligence and effective leadership

288 pages, Jossey-Bass 2015

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Permission to Screw Up

How I Learned to Lead by Doing (Almost) Everything Wrong
by Kristen Hadeed & Simon Sinek

Why read?

The inspiring, unlikely, laugh-out-loud story of how one woman learned to lead–and how she ultimately succeeded, not despite her many mistakes, but because of them.

272 pages, Portfolio 2017

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Radical Focus

Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results
by Christina Wodtke

Why read?

Ready to move your team in the right direction? Read this book together, and learn Wodtke’s powerful system of decision making to create your focus and find success.

166 pages, Cucina Media LLC 2016

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Alibaba

The House That Jack Ma Built
by Duncan Clark

Why read?

Clark tells Alibaba’s tale in the context of China’s momentous economic and social changes, illuminating an unlikely corporate titan as never before.

304 pages, Ecco 2016

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Behind the Cloud

The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized an Industry
by Marc Benioff & Carlye Adler

You get insights about…

…how salesforce.com did grow from a startup in a rented apartment into the world’s fastest growing software company in less than a decade?

304 pages, Wiley-Blackwell 2009

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Onward

How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul
by Howard Schultz & Joanne Gordon

Why read?

The CEO of Starbucks recounts the story and leadership lessons behind the global coffee company’s comeback and continued success.

368 pages, Rodale Books 2012

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Shoe Dog

A Memoir by the Creator of Nike
by Phil Knight

Why read?

In this candid and riveting memoir, for the first time ever, Nike founder and board chairman Phil Knight share the inside story of the company’s early days as an intrepid start-up and its evolution into one of the world’s most iconic, game-changing, and profitable brands.

400 pages, Scribner 2016

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Steve Jobs

by Walter Isaacson

What you will learn

Steve Jobs story is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.

656 pages, Simon & Schuster 2011

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Elon Musk

Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
by Ashlee Vance

Why read?

Thorough and insightful, Elon Musk brings to life a technology industry that is rapidly and dramatically changing by examining the life of one of its most powerful and influential titans.

416 pages, Ecco 2017

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Intercom on Starting Up

by Des Traynor & Eoghan McCabe

Why read?

This book is Intercom’s honest, opinionated take on what they’ve learned building Intercom over the past 6 years.

120 pages, Intercom 2017

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Bill & Dave

How Hewlett and Packard Built the World’s Greatest Company
by Michael S. Malone

Why read?

This is a fantastic biography, management guidebook, and business history, all in one.

352 pages, Portfolio Hardcover 2007

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The Intel Trinity

How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World’s Most Important Company
by Michael S. Malone

Why read?

The Intel Trinity is not just the story of Intel’s legendary past; it also offers an analysis of the formidable challenges that lie ahead as the company struggles to maintain its dominance, its culture, and its legacy.

560 pages, HarperBusiness 2014

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The Upstarts

How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World
by Brad Stone

Why read?

The Upstarts is the definitive story of two new titans of business and a dawning age of tenacity, conflict and wealth. In Brad Stone’s riveting account of the most radical companies of the new Silicon Valley, you discover how it all happened and what it took to change the world.

384 pages, Little, Brown and Company 2017

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Move fast and break things

How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy
by Jonathan Taplin

Why read?

A stinging polemic that traces the destructive monopolization of the internet by Google, Facebook and Amazon, and that proposes a new future for musicians, journalists, authors and filmmakers in the digital age.

320 pages, Little, Brown and Company 2017

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The Airbnb Story

How Three Ordinary Guys Disrupted an Industry, Made Billions . . . and Created Plenty of Controversy
by Leigh Gallagher

Why read?

This is the remarkable behind-the-scenes story of the creation and growth of Airbnb, the online lodging platform that has become, in under a decade, the largest provider of accommodations in the world.

256 pages, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2017

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Wild Ride

Inside Uber’s Quest for World Domination
by Adam Lashinsky

Why read?

This book is the untold story of Uber’s meteoric rise, and the massive ambitions of its larger-than-life founder and CEO.

240 pages, Portfolio 2017

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Masters of Doom

How two guys created an empire and transformed pop culture
by David Kushner

What’s so special?

Terrifically told… The storytelling is so fluid, so addictive, that your twitching thumbs keep working the pages.

352 pages, Piatkus Books 2012

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Netflixed

The Epic Battle for America’s Eyeballs
by Gina Keating

Why read?

The inside story of Netflix’s incredible rise and uncertain future as master of the video universe.

304 pages, Portfolio 2013

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Cousins Maine Lobster

How One Food Truck Became a Multimillion-Dollar Business
by Jim Tselikis & Sabin Lomac

What you will learn

This business book from the co-founders of the smash hit Cousins Maine Lobster food trucks reveals to new entrepreneurs how the authors built their brand through integrity and authenticity.

288 pages, St. Martin’s Press 2018

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Delivering Happiness

A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
by Tony Hsieh

Why read?

In “Delivering Happiness”, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh shares the different lessons he has learned in business and life, from starting a worm farm to running a pizza business, through LinkExchange, Zappos, and more.

272 pages, Grand Central Publishing 2013

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Becoming Facebook

The 10 Challenges That Defined the Company That’s Disrupting the World
by Mike Hoefflinger

Why read?

Intimate, fast-paced, and deeply informative, Becoming Facebook shares the true story of how Zuckerberg joined the ranks of iconic CEOs like Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Jeff Bezos-as Facebook grows up, overcomes setbacks, and works to connect the world.

256 pages, AMACOM 2017

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#Girlboss

by Sophia Amoruso

Why read?

In the New York Times bestseller that the Washington Post called “Lean In for misfits,” Sophia Amoruso shares how she went from dumpster diving to found one of the fastest-growing retailers in the world.

256 pages, Portfolio 2015

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Hatching Twitter

A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
by Nick Bilton

Why read?

The dramatic, unlikely story behind the founding of Twitter, by New York Times bestselling author and Vanity Fair special correspondent

320 pages, Portfolio 2014

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The Everything Store

Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
by Brad Stone

What is it about?

The definitive story of Amazon.com, one of the most successful companies in the world, and of its driven, brilliant founder, Jeff Bezos.

386 pages, Little, Brown and Company 2013

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Designing Connected Content

Plan and Model Digital Products for Today and Tomorrow
by Carrie Hane & Mike Atherton

What you will learn

An end-to-end process for building a structured content framework and how to plan and design interfaces for mobile, desktop, voice, and beyond.

240 pages, New Riders 2017

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Make It So

Interaction Design Lessons from Science Fiction
by Nathan Shedroff & Christopher Noessel

Love science fiction?

Readers who love science fiction (and don’t we all?) will go bananas over this informative book on how interaction design in sci-fi movies informs interaction design in the real world.

347 pages, Rosenfeld Media 2012

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Microinteractions

Designing with Details
by Dan Saffer

Why read?

This book teaches you how to design effective micro interactions: the small details that exist inside and around features.

170 pages, O’Reilly Media 2013

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The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design

by IDEO.org

Why read?

The Field Guide is the latest in IDEO.org’s suite of teaching tools and a step forward in sharing the practice and promise of human-centered design with the social sector.

192 pages, IDEO.org / Design Kit 2015

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Book of Ideas

A Journal of Creative Direction and Graphic Design
by Radim Malinic

What’s inside?

It’s about how the world outside influences the creativity inside; and how it inspires us, teaches us and makes us create better work.

254 pages, Brand Nu Limited 2016

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UX for Lean Startups

Faster, Smarter User Experience Research and Design
by Laura Klein

What the author says

I hope that everybody who reads the book will be able to learn from their customers and turn that information into products that people will actually buy. I want startups to stop building things people don’t want and can’t use.

240 pages, O’Reilly Media 2013

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Usability Matters

Practical UX for Developers and other Accidental Designers
by Matt Lacey

Interesting for app developers

Often, developers find UX intimidating and don’t know where to begin. This book gives practical advice and guidance on how to improve the UX of mobile apps on any platform.

325 pages, Manning Publications 2018

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Never Use Futura

by Douglas Thomas & Ellen Lupton

Why read?

This fascinating book explores the cultural history and uses of a face that’s so common you might not notice until you start looking, and then you can’t escape it.

208 pages, Princeton Architectural Press 2017

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The Shape of Design

by Frank Chimero

Why read?

You’ll learn about the creative process and the intersection of storytelling, craft and improvisation.

131 pages, Frank Chimero 2012

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Designing Products People Love

How Great Designers Create Successful Products
by Scott Hurff

Why read?

Written for designers, product managers, and others who want to communicate better with designers, this book is essential reading for anyone who contributes to the product creation process.

324 pages, O’Reilly Media 2016

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The Brand Gap

How to Bridge the Distance Between Business Strategy and Design
by Marty Neumeier

Why read?

This book shows how the creative and strategic ways of thinking can unite to produce a “charismatic brand” — a brand that customers feel is essential to their lives.

208 pages, New Riders 2005

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Emotional Design

Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things
by Don Norman

Read this book when…

you ever wondered why cheap wine tastes better in fancy glasses?

272 pages, Basic Books 2005

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The Non-Designer’s Design Book

by Robin Williams

Why read?

Whether you’re a Mac user or a Windows user, a type novice, or an aspiring graphic designer, you will find the instruction and inspiration to approach any design project with confidence.

240 pages, Peachpit Press 2014

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Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited

A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
by Steve Krug

What you will learn

Witty, commonsensical, and eminently practical, it’s one of the best-loved and most recommended books on Web design and usability.

216 pages, New Riders 2014

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Speculative Everything

Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming
by Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby

Why read?

This book offers you a tour through an emerging cultural landscape of design ideas, ideals, and approaches.

240 pages, The MIT Press 2013

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About Face

The Essentials of Interaction Design
by Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann & Christopher Noessel

Why read?

This book that brought interaction design out of the research labs and into the everyday lexicon and the updated Fourth Edition continues to lead the way with ideas and methods relevant to today’s design practitioners and developers.

720 pages, Wiley 2014

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This Is Service Design Thinking

Basics, Tools, Cases
by Mark Stickdorn

Unveil the buzzwords

This interdisciplinary textbook features 23 international authors to unveil the practical meaning behind Service design and design thinking.

380 pages, Bis Publishers 2012

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100 Things

Every Designer Needs to Know About People
Susan Weinschenk

Why read?

This book combines real science and research with practical examples to deliver a guide every designer needs. With it, you’ll be able to design more intuitive and engaging work for print, websites, applications, and products that match the way people think, work, and play.

256 pages, New Riders 2011

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Design Is Storytelling

by Ellen Lupton

Why read?

This is a playbook for creative thinking, showing designers how to use storytelling techniques to create satisfying graphics, products, services and experiences.

160 pages, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum 2017

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The User Experience Team of One

A Research and Design Survival Guide
by Leah Buley

Why read?

The User Experience Team of One prescribes a range of approaches that have a big impact and take less time and fewer resources than the standard lineup of UX deliverables.

264 pages, Rosenfeld Media 2013

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User Research

A Practical Guide to Designing Better Products and Services
by Stephanie Marsh

Why read?

This book shows how to use the vast array of user research methods available. Covering all the key research methods including face-to-face user testing, card sorting, surveys, A/B testing and many more.

288 pages, Kogan Page 2018

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Own it

The Power of Women at Work
by Sallie Krawcheck

Why read?

This book is a new kind of career playbook for a new era of feminism, offering women a new set of rules for professional success: one that plays to their strengths and builds on the power they already have.

256 pages, Crown Business 2017

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Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office

Unconscious Mistakes Women Make That Sabotage Their Careers
by Lois P. Frankel

Why read?

Before you were told to “Lean in”, Dr Lois Frankel told you how to get that corner office.

384 pages, Business Plus 2014

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What Works

Gender Equality by Design
by Iris Bohnet

Why read?

Gender equality is a moral and a business imperative. But unconscious bias holds us back, and de-biasing people’s minds have proven to be difficult and expensive.

400 pages, Belknap Press 2016

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Girl Code

Unlocking the Secrets to Success, Sanity, and Happiness for the Female Entrepreneur
by Cara Alwill Leyba

Why read?

Women around the world have responded to Cara Alwill Leyba’s Girl Code with a resounding YES. Companies like Kate Spade and Macy’s have brought her in to teach “the Code.” Inc. magazine named Girl Code one of the “Top 9 Inspiring Books Every Female Entrepreneur Should Read” alongside Lean In, #Girlboss, and Thrive.

176 pages, Portfolio 2017

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Reset

My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change
by Ellen Pao

Why read?

The “necessary and incisive” (Roxane Gay) account of the discrimination case that “has blown open a conversation about the status of women” in the workplace (The New York Times)

288 pages, Soiegel & Grau 2017

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A Uterus Is a Feature, Not a Bug

The Working Woman’s Guide to Overthrowing the Patriarchy
by Sarah Lacy

Why read?

A rallying cry for working mothers everywhere that demolishes the “distracted, emotional, weak” stereotype and definitively shows that these professionals are more focused, decisive, and stronger than any other force.

320 pages, HarperBusiness 2017

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Women in Tech

Take Your Career to the Next Level with Practical Advice and Inspiring Stories
by Tarah Wheele & Esther Dyson

Why read?

Written by a female startup CEO and featuring a host of other successful contributors, this book will help dismantle the unconscious social bias against women in the tech industry.

272 pages, Sasquatch Books 2017

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Brotopia

Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley
by Emily Chang

Why read?

Silicon Valley is a modern utopia where anyone can change the world. Unless you’re a woman.

320 pages, Portfolio 2018

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In the Company of Women

Inspiration and Advice from over 100 Makers, Artists, and Entrepreneurs
by Grace Bonney

Emma Straub says:

I want to rip out every page of this glorious book and hang them on my wall so that I can be surrounded by these incredible women all day long.

351 pages, Artisan 2016

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We Should All Be Feminists

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

What does “feminism” mean today?

That is the question at the heart of We Should All Be Feminists, a personal, eloquently-argued essay — adapted from her much-viewed Tedx talk of the same name.

65 pages, Vintage 2014

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Earning It

Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World
by Joann S. Lublin

Why read?

More than fifty trailblazing executive women who broke the corporate glass ceiling offer inspiring and surprising insights and lessons in this essential, in-the-trenches career guide from Joann S. Lublin.

304 pages, HarperBusiness 2016

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Geek Girl Rising

Inside the Sisterhood Shaking Up Tech
by Heather Cabot & Samantha Parent Walravens

Learn new face

Geek Girl Rising isn’t about the famous tech trailblazers you already know, like Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer. Instead, veteran journalists Heather Cabot and Samantha Walravens introduce readers to new fearless female entrepreneurs and technologists.

272 pages, St. Martin’s Press 2017

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Alexander Hipp
PM Library

Founder of Beyond, PM Library & Riptide, Ex-N26