Here is an excerpt from 250words.com on the top eleven business books to look out for in the fourth quarter followed by a little something on books such as You Only Have to Be Right Once, Berkshire Beyond Buffett, Fail Better, Twitter is Not a Strategy and more.
In July, I wrote that there were a lot of great books coming out in Q3. I was right. The Innovators, A Sense of Style, Zero to One, How Google Works…. Each of these and a few others made several bestseller lists.
Luckily, there are a lot of great books to look forward to in Q4. Like last time, I scoured the coming soon section of a few major retailers, picked 11 notable releases, and listed them below. I’m especially excited for three: Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal, Fail Better: Design Smart Mistakes and Succeed Sooner by Anjali Sastry & Kara Penn, and The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace by Ron Friedman PhD.
See full article by 250words.com
Business books: You Only Have to Be Right Once
You Only Have to Be Right Once: The Unprecedented Rise of the Instant Tech Billionaires by Randall Lane
In 2007, twenty-one-year old David Karp launched Tumblr, a simple micro-blogging platform, on a whim. By 2012, it had become one of the top ten online destinations, drawing 170 million visitors. By 2013, Yahoo had acquired Tumblr for over $1 billion. Just like that, a kid who hadn’t even earned his high school diploma was worth over a quarter billion dollars. And he’s not the only one . . .
Silicon Valley’s newest billionaires represent a unique and unconventional breed of entrepreneur: young, bold, and taking the world by storm with their extreme speed, insatiable hunger, and progressive leadership. These whiz kids (and, to be fair, a few adults) have the hottest companies in the world. They are all turning just one brilliant insight or hook into money at a rate never before seen in human history—creating companies that, even with no revenue, garner insane valuations.
Business books: Berkshire Beyond Buffett
Berkshire Beyond Buffett: The Enduring Value of Values by Lawrence Cunningham
Berkshire Hathaway, the $300+ billion conglomerate that Warren Buffett built, is among the world’s largest and most famous corporations. Yet, for all its power and celebrity, few people understand Berkshire, and many assume it cannot survive without Buffett. This book challenges that assumption.
In a comprehensive portrait of the corporate culture that unites Berkshire’s subsidiaries, Lawrence Cunningham unearths the traits that assure the conglomerate’s perpetual prosperity. Riveting stories of each subsidiary’s origins, triumphs, and journey to Berkshire reveal how managers generate economic value from intangibles like thrift, integrity, entrepreneurship, autonomy, and a sense of permanence.
Business books: Hooked
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal
Business books: Fail Better
Fail Better: Design Smart Mistakes and Succeed Sooner by Anjali Sastry & Kara Penn
Whether you’re rolling out a new product from a city-view office or rolling up your sleeves to deliver a social service in the field, learning why and how to embrace failure can help you do better, faster. Smart leaders, entrepreneurs, and change agents design their innovation projects with a key idea in mind: ensure that every failure is maximally useful.
In Fail Better, Anjali Sastry and Kara Penn show how to create the conditions, culture, and habits to systematically, ruthlessly, and quickly figure out what works, in three steps:
1. Launch every innovation project with the right groundwork
2. Build and refine ideas and products through iterative action
3. Identify and embed the learning
Business books: Twitter is Not a Strategy
Twitter is Not a Strategy: Rediscovering the Art of Brand Marketing by Tom Doctoroff
In a cultural climate saturated by technology, marketing professionals have focused their energies on creating newer and more digital methods of advertising their brands, with the fear that if they don’t embrace “Big Data,” they will fade into obscurity. But Tom Doctoroff, Asia CEO for J. Walter Thompson, argues that this frenzy over digital and social media has created a schism in the marketing world that is hindering brands from attaining their true business potential. The tension between traditional branding and the seemingly unlimited possibilities presented by the advent of “digital” branding leads companies to abandon the tried and true aspects of marketing for the flash of the new. In Twitter is Not a Strategy, Doctoroff explains why a strategy that truly integrates the two ideas is the best way for a brand to move into the future. Using some of the biggest brand names in the world as examples, such as Coca-Cola, Nike, and Apple, he breaks down the framework of marketing to explain how digital marketing can’t stand without the traditional foundation.
Business books: Well-Designed
Well-Designed: How to Use Empathy to Create Products People Love by Jon Kolko
Innovators today are told to run loose and think lean in order to fail fast and succeed sooner. But in a world obsessed with the new, where cool added features often trump actual customer needs, it’s the consumer who suffers. In our quest to be more agile, we end up creating products that underwhelm.
So how does a company like Nest, creator of the mundane thermostat, earn accolades like “beautiful” and “revolutionary” and a $3.2 billion Google buyout? What did Nest do differently to create a household product that people speak of with love?
Business books: The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels
The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels by Alex Epstein
For decades, environmentalists have told us that using fossil fuels is a self-destructive addiction that will destroy our planet. Yet at the same time, by every measure of human well-being, from life expectancy to clean water to climate safety, life has been getting better and better.
How can this be?
The explanation, energy expert Alex Epstein argues in The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, is that we usually hear only one side of the story. We’re taught to think only of the negatives of fossil fuels, their risks and side effects, but not their positives—their unique ability to provide cheap, reliable energy for a world of seven billion people. And the moral significance of cheap, reliable energy, Epstein argues, is woefully underrated. Energy is our ability to improve every single aspect of life, whether economic or environmental.
Business books: The Best Place to Work
The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace by Ron Friedman PhD
In The Best Place to Work, award-winning psychologist Ron Friedman, Ph.D. uses the latest research from the fields of motivation, creativity, behavioral economics, neuroscience, and management to reveal what really makes us successful at work. Combining powerful stories with cutting edge findings, Friedman shows leaders at every level how they can use scientifically-proven techniques to promote smarter thinking, greater innovation, and stronger performance.
Business books: Empire of Cotton
Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert
Cotton is so ubiquitous as to be almost invisible, yet understanding its history is key to understanding the origins of modern capitalism. Sven Beckert’s rich, fascinating book tells the story of how, in a remarkably brief period, European entrepreneurs and powerful statesmen recast the world’s most significant manufacturing industry, combining imperial expansion and slave labor with new machines and wage workers to change the world. Here is the story of how, beginning well before the advent of machine production in the 1780s, these men captured ancient trades and skills in Asia, and combined them with the expropriation of lands in the Americas and the enslavement of African workers to crucially reshape the disparate realms of cotton that had existed for millennia, and how industrial capitalism gave birth to an empire, and how this force transformed the world.
Business books: A Random Walk Down Wall Street
A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing (Eleventh Edition) by Burton G. Malkiel
In a time of market volatility and economic uncertainty, when high-frequency traders and hedge fund managers seem to tower over the average investor, Burton G. Malkiel’s classic and gimmick-free investment guide is now more necessary than ever. Rather than tricks, what you’ll find here is a time-tested and thoroughly research-based strategy for your portfolio. Whether you’re considering your first 401(k) contribution or contemplating retirement, this fully updated edition of A Random Walk Down Wall Street should be the first book on your reading list.
Business books: Make Change Work for You
Make Change Work for You: 10 Ways to Future-Proof Yourself, Fearlessly Innovate, and Succeed Despite Uncertainty by Scott Steinberg
Business, culture, and competitive landscapes have fundamentally changed, but basic principles and best practices for succeeding and future-proofing both yourself and your organization haven’t. With a mix of compelling stories, research from the social sciences and psychology, and real-world insights, Make Change Work for You shows how to reignite your career, rekindle creativity, and fearlessly innovate your way to success by providing the tools needed to master uncertainty and conquer every challenge in life or business.
Make Change Work for Youopens with a comprehensive overview of the most common factors that lead to self-defeating behaviors, including fear of failure, embarrassment, underperformance, rejection, confrontation, isolation, and change itself.
