entrepreneurs are renaissance people. to be successful, they have to be interested in multiple fields and the intersections between them. they dive into disparate domains and look for connections that will make our lives easier and more meaningful.
From modern psychology and twentieth-century history to timeless stories and future predictions, 2016’s books on entrepreneurship reflect a breadth of scope and passion. Below are my top choices for books published during the first half of this year:
You are reading: Best books for entrepreneurs 2016
the fable of a paperboy by deep patel.
Seventeen-year-old Deep Patel weaves together 11 timeless principles of success as he recounts a boy’s evolution from poor high school student to savvy business owner. Far from bragging that she knows all the answers at his age, Patel sticks to what she does know: her father’s rise from paperboy to successful businessman. the fable of a newspaper boy illustrates the seeds of great businesses so that we can recognize and sow our own.
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The book also includes interviews with professors, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and General David Petraeus, a section I will read repeatedly. In these sections, some of the most admired people of our time deliver the best entrepreneurship lessons in clear-as-day English. they remind us that the best time to take risks is now and that we don’t need to invent a fancy new app or technology to excel in business. we can start in our own neighborhoods.
patel’s fable is thus a refreshing departure from the statistics that flood professional development books today. it is less focused on indoctrinating its principles with bulleted evidence than conveying examples of what worked, for our interpretation and use.
originalsby adam grant.
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originals was, to my surprise, more about corporate creativity than individual innovation. Perhaps this approach is due to the fact that, as a Wharton School professor, Adam Grant has consulting and research experience that spans Fortune 500 companies (Disney, Goldman Sachs, NFL) and not individual case studies.
Grant’s work both in academia and in corporate America contributes to the book’s brilliance. Two decades ago, social psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi published Creativity, which explored the core tenants of creativity through interviews with 100 highly successful creative people. Grant now builds on these kinds of theories with compelling cross-sectional and longitudinal research on creativity in the workforce.
In Originals, Grant explains empirically why middle managers are less creative, what their choice of Internet browser says about their work style and chances of success, why familiarity sabotages new ideas, why optimism is not. the best innovation strategy, why later children tend to be more creative, and why the “lone wolf” kills creative output. discusses the benefits of procrastinating, the limits of our intuition about generating ideas, and the counterintuitive evidence that entrepreneurs do have a higher tolerance for risk.
smarter, faster better by charles duhigg.
charles duhigg is first and foremost a writer, a fact evident on page 1. while many books on entrepreneurship read like engineering manuals, the smarter, the faster, the betterreflects the care and narrative artistry one might see in an article in the atlantic, national geographic or thenew york times, where duhigg has been investigative reporter for the past decade.
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duhigg conceptualizes productivity as much more than time management and technology tools. Productivity, she writes, “is not about working harder or sweating more. it’s not simply a product of spending more hours at your desk or making greater sacrifices.” More generally and more importantly, productivity depends on making the right decisions: where we put our attention; how we set goals; how we motivate ourselves; who we surround ourselves with; how we absorb information Without these practices, we can have perfect schedules but unproductive and unsatisfying lives.
From the early days of saturday night live, to a poker player competing in a $2 million winner-take-all tournament, to an airline co-pilot who inadvertently dropped himself and his his passengers to the bottom of the ocean, duhigg tells fascinating true stories of geniuses and productivity failures. As Susan Cain, author of The Power of Introverts puts it, Duhigg gives us “a more human way of thinking about how productivity actually happens.”
steve case’s third wave
In The Third Wave, Internet ancestor and AOL co-founder Steve Case predicts the third phase of technology entrepreneurship.
the first phase (which he calls a “wave” in homage to alvin toffler’s 1980 science fiction book the third wave) was connecting the internet: the technical logistics of making the internet possible and widely available. the second wave was about connecting the internet to things: digitizing physical products and services. and the third wave, case predicts, will mean connecting the internet to everything. In this respect, the third wave will be more like the first than the second. it will be a second digital revolution.
case believes that the third wave of tech entrepreneurship will require collaborations with mature industries, such as health care, finance and foreign policy, to circumvent bureaucratic regulations and instigate systemic change. while the second wave had low barriers to entry and focused on making people’s lives easier, the third wave will be more complex, more institutionally oriented, and more meaningful to society. he also predicts it will decentralize, taking business away from silicon valley.
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