Best Business Books | Hacker News Reader

Best Business Books

personalmba.com

20 pointsAnon8417 comments

What value is obtained from reading a business book that you cannot learn yourself? Not cocky, just curious.

You get to learn from other people's mistakes without having to make them yourself.

hmm. interesting. i sort of disagree. experience is the best learning tool.

It's a choice... I prefer to read a book to learn, say, how to read dangerous chemicals warning labels, than to try every single one of them to see which ones are poisonous... Some experiences you don't want to have, which doesn't mean you cant learn from them, though.

Well, obviously. But with business specifically, I'm not sure if that applies. Say you pick up a book about how to write a business plan, set up a sales team, put together an effective marketing team, etc. It seems those are more of an art form than a science, and those abilities strengthen with experience. And if a mistake is that costly, then maybe you shouldn't be running a business to begin with?

I'm still not convinced. However, I am definitely in favor of reading.

Civilization is possible because we redistribute our lessons learned from experience.

There are plenty of things you can learn yourself, where books give you a head start, or give you some insights that might have taken you a while, and a lot of pain, to figure out yourself.

That said, many business books tend to suffer from a problem of having a fairly simple concept at heart, and needing to pad that out to make it into something book length. Thus, my site Squeezed Books, which summarizes them. I'd also like to foster discussion of some of the books in question, as I think there is something to be gained from the discussion and dissection of the ideas presented.

I agree that many business books have a good ten to twenty page article trapped inside, with the book length writing required as packaging for sale. Some books, e.g. Innovator's Dilemma, offer a detailed review of examples that help to reinforce the basic concepts (as distinct from a collection of personal anecdotes and reminiscences).

> packaging for sale.

... and for future consulting work, in some cases:-)

Yeah, with the good ones, it's not like the rest of it is just "garbage", and I enjoy reading them, but I think for people who just want to know what the 'big idea' is, you don't need the extras.

There is no substitute for direct experience, but I find that a good book can give me a perspective or a paradigm to approach a situation that it may have taken me months or years to realize on my own.

I remember reading "Crossing the Chasm" for the first time and experiencing the feeling that the Chasm model organized a number of scattered perceptions and events from my prior decade of work experience and made sense of them.

Not every book is that good, but some are and if in a few hours of reading I can shave a year of experimenting and sense-making off of future efforts it's a good investment. I try to balance engagement with reflection, but good books combined with direct experience have enabled me to get better faster than I would have without reading them.

Solid list. I've read maybe 1/5th of those. There were some glaring omissions though:

-Strategy & Innovation: to leave off Clayton Christensen's "Innovator's Dilemma" and "Innovator's Solution" books is sacrilege -Psychology: Roger Dawson's "Power Negotiating" audio series is a must-listen for pysch and negotiating tactics -Business History/Ref: Founders at Work by YCombinator's own Jessica Livingston is a must-read for tech startup founders

There's digests on handful of others I recommend here: http://www.scrollinondubs.com/notes

I'm surprised Jerry Kaplan's book isn't on this list. It's called "Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure." I'm also enjoying "High Stakes, No Prisoners," by Charles Ferguson, who invented FrontPage.

This list recommends Zinsser for writing; for a hacker, I'd sub in John Williams "Style: Toward Clarity and Grace", a Richard Gabriel recommendation with a more systematic, almost engineer-y bent.

I definitely don't trust a site that veils their affiliate link. (Load their SEO optimized 'book links' in lynx then control-c really quickly. You'll see a link that looks like ttp://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fdp%2F0814473431%2F&tag=personalmba-20&l )

This site was designed solely to garner commission on book sales. At least when someone like Jeff Atwood tries to weasel his way into affiliate sales, he pretends to have read the book and gives a critique.

This is just their reading list. You should checkout the forum and blog. And yes, those are affiliate links:

    $ curl -I http://personalmba.com/books/cut-to-the-chase/
    HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
    Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2008 19:26:49 GMT
    Server: LiteSpeed
    Connection: Keep-Alive
    Keep-Alive: timeout=5, max=100
    Location: http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F %2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fdp%2F0385516207%2F&tag=personalmba-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325
    $

Considering how easy it is to get around the affiliate link (just search for the ISBN in a separate amazon/google window) OK, he should probably have put a little disclaimer somewhere about the affiliate program, but other than that, I don't really understand the "he's using affiliate links" drama. If you were to buy a book he suggested, why not let him be rewarded for suggesting it? You lose nothing, and he gets his work rewarded. If you disagree with this, just buy the book without following his link.

There's nothing wrong with using affiliate links. Hidden affiliate links have nothing to do with you or to fool you, it's to stop the search engine from punishing them which again, there is nothing wrong with.

He didn't hide the affiliation, he said so up front. Under each category is a mini-review of each book. That makes the site more useful than just a list of books.

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