Miyamoto Musashi · ★★★★☆ · 166 pages · 1645

David B. Yoffie · ★★★★★ · 272 pages · 2015

Surprisingly good book on explaining the strategies of Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs and also their company's pitfalls after the three departed their businesses.

Chip Heath · ★★★★☆ · 291 pages · 2006

The principles of Made to Stick are the following:

W. Chan Kim · ★★★★☆ · 240 pages · 2005

It was a good book a little dry at times on essentially out thinking the competition by not competing with them in the first place and creating something completely different and unique. Having to think through what a blue ocean strategy is seems a bit daunting but also why business can be fun. Creating new value adds that people wouldn't consider.

Alan Weiss · ★★★★☆ · 288 pages · 2011

While the first 9 chapters were good on getting started and how to think about consulting the last part sort of dragged a bit in terms of implementing Consulting Strategies. That portion seems specific to the places you'd work at so I don't know if it is a good value add in any sense for this book.

Brad Feld · ★★★★☆ · 188 pages · 2012

A book about how to build a startup community focusing on examples of the authors starting such a community in Boulder. The end result is that there is a lot of active involvement with a lot of different groups but the focus should be on making entrepreneurs succeed. And one of the main points: don't equate entrepreneurship to access to VC money.

John Jantsch · ★★★★☆ · 256 pages · 2010

Though the book is a little dated it has really made me think about content as a valuable marketing source. Many of the companies I like seem to always put out good content that I can reference or go to. Definitely a part of marketing that I should have taken into account earlier.

Alistair Croll · ★★★★★ · 440 pages · 2013

I don't think I will be ever done reading this book. It is one of those books that you will be constantly looking back at and rereading it as you are building a company. In a sense I've gotten through reading the book but as I am building my company I am constantly going back and forth within it to figure out what metrics I need to take into account at the appropriate stage.

Eric Weiner · ★★★★☆ · 368 pages · 2016

This book is like reading a travel journal that goes to places where genius flourished and attempting to find a baseline for why genius thrived there. I really enjoyed the writing style and the anecdotal way in which the author tries to come up with a theory for genius. Unfortunately, the variables of what constitutes a place a place of genius are many and the author seems to have shown that. However, there are a few common trends it seems. Mentor mentee relationships, people not wanting to step on each other, money, government support, people willing to take craziness and most importantly the society not falling for hubris.

Harry Beckwith · ★★★☆☆ · 336 pages · 2007

An interesting book. Lots of anecdotes and aphorisms about how to be a good sales person. I guess it came down to be nice and help others. Drawn out from that. I may not be the target audience for this book.

Keith Ferrazzi · ★★★★☆ · 309 pages · 2005

Good book on how to think of life in terms of relationships and giving instead of taking. Though a book for sales people I learned quite a few things from the book in terms of how to think of relationships both personal and professional not as extracting things from others but as a two way street where the more connected you become with the other the better the relationship blossoms. Those more meaningful connections leads to achieving things.

Ron Willingham · ★★★☆☆ · 272 pages · 2006

This book can be summed up as, "To sell something you have to believe in what you are trying to sell and it has to match up with your values otherwise people will be able to see through it and you'll fail."

Daniel H. Pink · ★★★☆☆ · 272 pages · 2012

A good way or reorienting what selling is in the 21st century where there is no real information asymmetry between buyer and seller. Feel a lot of the content is similar to Seth Godin's books. Did have a few insights but those could have been done in a shorter form.

Geoffrey A. Moore · ★★★★★ · 211 pages · 2002

I wish I read this book like 5 years ago when I started in the tech industry. Moore covers how to successfully transition from an early stage market to the general populace and how to make this transition. This "crossing of the chasm" is very much pick a market segment, win that segment and move to the next segment.

Frans P.B. Osinga · ★★★★★ · 336 pages · 2006

This book took me while to get through as Osinga essentially deconstructs all of John Boyd's presentations and papers and attempts to figure out how his ideas were shaped. It is a challenging book to read especially since it covers so many different things from postmodern deconstructionism, complexity theory, Godel's Incompleteness theory, evolutionary theory and more to help understand John Boyd's OODA loop and the complexity around that idea.

Charles Duhigg · ★★★★☆ · 401 pages · 2016

I like Duhigg's writing style of putting stories to explain concepts. It makes for an interesting if a little longer of a read. In this book he covers how to be productive in the modern world with all the things that are happening around us. I will attempt to summarize each chapter.

George Orwell · ★★★★★ · 328 pages · 1949

Brad Stone · ★★★★★ · 384 pages · 2013

I wanted to read about what makes Amazon tick and Stone mentioned the following:

Ashlee Vance · ★★★★☆ · 392 pages · 2015

Elon Musk is the guy who seems to be taking the mantle of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs nowadays and his companies have done immense things. Though I was interested in Musk I was more interested in the methods he uses at his companies to achieve what he does and it seems to be a combination of things.

Denise Lee Yohn · ★★★☆☆ · 272 pages · 2013

The book is basically an anthology of anecdotes of what great brands do. Although it does have some good things to remember such as branding starts from within, inform all decisions, etc. those could also just be construed as something a company does anyways. So I was a bit disappointed in that there was no deep dive into branding from a human psychology perspective. Otherwise, you can just read the table of contents and extrapolate what the message of the author is.