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Comment by ThomPete | Hacker News Reader

My general advice for entrepreneurs (although I am sure most of them know already) would be to not read books too close to the subject you want to know about. Instead you should read books about subjects around the field of entrepreneurship. (accounting or financing as an example)

If I where to give one recommendation it would be Clayton Christensens "The Innovators Dilemma"

That book isn't specific to entrepreneurs but to business in general. It is however the one book that will give you an understanding of the game you are in.

As en entrepreneur you are trying to find the holes in the cheese or create your own. Not to eat it.

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Agreed about The Innovators Dilemma; and from the original list, Founders at Work, Crucial Conversations, and The Design of Everyday Things. Your mileage may vary on The Alchemist; some people find it transformational, others aren't so excited. I haven't read the others on the list so don't mean to be dissing them, just don't have any first-hand experience.

I'd also add

- Sherry Turkle's The Second Self - Geoffrey Miller's Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado (a different Geoffrey Miller than the one in the original list :) ) - Rita McGrath and Ian MacMillan, The Entrepreneurial Mindset

I have never understood why people are so positive about "Design of everyday things".

I guess the book might make you appreciate design and that might affect your sensitivity to design.

But I think you need to have a general affection for design in general to really get anything out of the book.

Otherwise you run the risk of thinking your understand design now that you have read a book about it.

Just my opinion of course.

But I think you need to have a general affection for design in general to really get anything out of the book.

In my experience you don't :-) At least, I've seen it switch many people out of the design == "making things pretty" mindset into something more productive. It's always on my reading list for people who don't get design, or people who understand that they need to get design. Seems be effective with both groups.

I think it has something to do with it not being written as a "design" book per se. Remember the original 1988 title was "The Psychology of Everyday Things". It's up there with "Peopleware" as a book I keep buying for clients :-)

In general I agree.

But I think the question is whether you can be a successful entrepreneur without having some sense or idea about design.

In my experience from working with many many startups the entrepreneurs either get it or they don't. In fact if they don't they wont even entertain the idea that they don't get it.

But yeah our experiences might differ :)

Most skillful people will tend to develop good taste and a sense of design in and around their own field of expertise. The Design of Everyday Things has helped people I know expand that sense beyond its original narrower confines to, as the title suggests, the world of everyday things.

The downside is that now some of them think they can instantly render a well-founded opinion on anything relating to design. Although that may simply be a corollary of the general phenomenon where experts in one field (and programmers and engineers may be the worst) think they possess the master key to critical thinking and problem solving in any and all fields.

fantastic!

Should be Geoffrey Moore.

Indeed. How embarassing. Thanks for the correction!

> The Innovators Dilemma

Good book, but ... can't you pretty much sum it up in a page or two at most?

You mean just like every other business book? :)

Perhaps although I think there are more gems in this book (and Druckers for that matter) than in most other books.

He talks about something less trivial and fundamental about innovation which I don't think most other books I have read do.

You can also listen to this: http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail135.html

A great speech he did a while back which sums up his opinion.

> You mean just like every other business book? :)

Yeah. I had a site doing summaries for those for a while, and the percentage of them like that is fairly high. He's definitely a bright, interesting guy, who seems like the 'real deal', and not just some 'guru' kind of self-promoter. However, that book really can be compressed into a brief summary.

I have the same feeling. This is not somewhat disturbing?

I think it's due to the fact that you can't really sell a 10 page book, so even if the idea would fit in one, you have to fluff it out to make a real book out of it.

The one page summary only works if you already believe it. The rest of it describes the research methodology that led to the disruption theory. He goes through many industries (OTOMH, disk drives, steel mini-mills, and ditch digging machines plus many more) to show how a new, worse technology served some new market, gained a foothold and customer base to build from, then improved to the point where it displaced the incumbent.

Think of PCs vs workstations, the iPhone vs Blackberry (the iPhone was a terrible smartphone according the the market in 2007, i.e. heavy email/business users), etc.

FWIW, I think the sequel, The Innovator's Solution, is a more useful book.

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