What are the best business books ever?
Good question. Personally, I get bogged down by most business books since too many are badly-organized and ill-thought-out exercises in cheerleading. So, I cruised the Web a bit and found this list by Shoulders of Giants and have to agree with some, but not all, of the titles and I haven’t read all of them.
Here’s the list:
- Barbarians at the Gate – Bryan Burrough
- Behind the Scenes in Advertising – Jeremy Bullmore
- Blue Ocean Strategy – W.Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne
- Built to Last – Jim Collins and Jerry Porras
- Competing for the Future – Gary Hamel & CK Prahalad
- Competitive Advantage – Michael Porter
- Eating The Big Fish – Adam Morgan
- Emotional Intelligence – Daniel Goleman
- Freakonomics – Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubnr
- Funky Business – Jonas Ridderstrale & Kjell Nordstrom
- Great to Good – Jim Collins
- In Search of Excellence – Tom Peters et al
- No Logo – Naomi Klein
- One Minute Manager – Kenneth Blanchard & Spencer Johnson
- Purple Cow – Seth Godin
- Seven Habits of Highly Effective People- Stephen R. Covey
- Technology’s Long Tail – Chris Anderson
- The Age of Unreason – Charles Handy
- The Essential Drucker – Peter F. Drucker
- The Great Crash 1929 – J.K. Galbraith
- The Innovators Dilemma – Clayton M. Christensen
- Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell
- The New Age of Innovation – CK Prahalad & MS Kishnan
- Up The Organization – Robert Townsend
- When Giants Learn to Dance – Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Often, my favorite business books are actually histories of corporate titans rather than “how-to” books. Two works by Ron Chernow of John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan come to mind. What about you?
