John’s Blog

1 | Al Billings

August 21st, 2008 at 1:55 pm

What business books do you actually recommend to people, especially to non-business people?

2 | johnlilly

August 21st, 2008 at 6:33 pm

There are a few that I've written about here — although some aren't business books, strictly speaking. For standard business books, I liked Dealing with Darwin, by Geoffrey Moore, and all of his books are important to read so that you understand the basic lingo that a lot of people use. The Starfish and the Spider is another book kind of like that.

For behavioral economics, I've liked Freakonomics and Predictably Irrational. Made to Stick by Chip Heath is a great marketing book. Bob Sutton's books are useful, especially the ones about evidence-based management.

I think Tom Friedman's recent work is great for understanding some of the global dynamics of the business world, as is Fareed Zakaria's new book, The Post-American World.

The Search, by John Batelle, is a pretty interesting way to learn about Google.

And Regional Advantage, by Annalee Saxenian, is one of the most important books ever written about Silicon Valley culture. (What the Doormouse Said, by John Markoff, is also great, but different.)

Those are just the ones I've read/blogged about over the last 4 years or so that I particularly liked.

3 | Al Billings

August 21st, 2008 at 11:55 pm

I was reading The Starfish and the Spider before the Summit but I had to return it before the trip so I didn't finish it. I have read Freakonomics. The Zakaria book has been recommended to me twice in the past two weeks, so perhaps I'll be looking that one up.

I've read the Markoff book but not the Saxenian one. Thanks for the recommendations.

4 | Rohit

September 11th, 2008 at 8:00 am

Hi John,

Thanks for skimming the book … two things that might change your opinion about it being run of the mill:

1. Page 185 (in case you're short on time as we all are)
2. Check about 3/4 of the way down the page on copyright/ISBN page for a secret URL to bonus content

R

5 | johnolilly

September 11th, 2008 at 9:41 pm

hey rohit — thanks for commenting. sorry to be dismissive — i think many of the things you've written i internalized a while ago, so wasn't as useful as i was hoping. concept is good, though, and maybe useful for folks who don't have the same context.