The 48 business books that I recommend the most

Image from DALL-E

People occasionally ask me for my reading list for business books.

Let me give a caveat. I’ve only read about 200¹ business books. And, I’ve forgotten the details of some of the good ones, like I don’t know how they’ve aged.

While I like the books on this list, I don’t want to oversell. There are many other great business books I don’t know about or haven’t read yet. I expect to add to this list and know that others have equally valuable lists with different books.

Here are the books that I recommend the most. (If the book link is bold, the link is to a write-up I did of the book that might give you more color. Otherwise, it points to Amazon.)

Operations and Supply Chain

1. The Goal. This is my go-to recommendation. This is a must-read if you work in or near any type of operation. Many people in operations will have read it. It is written as a novel, reads fast, and is packed with wisdom.

2. Factory Physics. This is a textbook I use in my Operations Excellence class. The early chapters cover the history of operations, inventory, MRP, and the Lean revolution. After that, it provides the science of why Lean works. Here is a sample of a concept in the book. There are a lot of people that will tell me that this is the better book when I mention The Goal.

3. Scaling up Excellence. This book answers an important question— how do you spread excellence from one pocket of your organization to everyone else? I recommend this book quite often to C-suite executives.

4. Designing and Managing the Supply Chain. An excellent textbook for understanding the supply chain in depth.

5. Operations Rules. I would call this an advanced book for managers. It combines ideas from operations and supply chains. There is good material on having an operational strategy match the value it provides customers.

6. High Output Management. This classic from Andy Grove uses many operations techniques to teach people how to be better managers. Ben Horowitz wrote an intro to the book.

7. Supply Chain Management for Dummies. See the review.

8. The Machine that Changed the World. This book showed everyone in manufacturing that a new trend called Lean was coming. This is a classic. (I read the original 1990 version.)

9. The Toyota Way A great explanation of Toyota’s version of Lean. (I read the 1st Edition.)

10. Shirts Off Our Back, Boot Off Our Feet. A retired Lieutenant General, the 2nd highest ranking supply chain leader in the US Army in charge of a team of 120,000, wrote about the Army’s supply chain.

11. The Power of Habit. I put this book in the operations section because it has a great chapter on Alcoa and its focus on safety.

12. The Everything Store. This is the story of Amazon. I found enough discussion of operations to put it on this list.

13. Supply Chain Network Design. Full disclosure: this is my book. But, I think it is OK.

14. Bonus Blog: The Operations Room blog has a lot of great material in the archive.

Practical AI

1. Competing in the Age of AI. This is my go-to book for explaining how companies should think about AI. This is the required book for my practical AI class. (edit: The first five chapters, about half the book, are the key ones to read.)

2. Prediction Machines. I recommend this book a lot. In my mind, the most creative idea was that most business problems can be reframed as prediction problems.

3. Optimization Edge. This is a book about optimization for the general audience.

4. Hard Facts. This book was written in 2006 when Competing on Analytics (see below) came out. It deserves to be just as famous. But, he didn’t get as lucky with the name (this book uses the term evidence-based management). One fun story is the discussion of using data to determine if customers at 7-11 wanted happy cashiers or quick ones.

5. Artificial Intelligence. This provides an overview of AI algorithms and is skeptical that we are getting close to general intelligence.

6. Moneyball. A classic book on using data to get an advantage. This book helped the analytics movement gain attention in the overall culture.

7. Blackett’s War. This is about the science that helped win World War II. An easy read meant for the general public.

8. Smarter Together. Full disclosure: This book was written by Coupa’s CEO, the company that acquired mine. This is about the idea of B2B communities. Here is a post I did on the topic.

9. Managerial Analytics. Full disclosure: This is my book. I’ve been itching to redo this one, but that’s probably a couple of years out.

10. Bonus Article: HBR Article: Competing on Analytics. This article (and book of the same name) kicked off the analytics movement and led right to the Practical AI movement.

Start-ups

1. Rework. This author has great material for start-ups. I like this book, but his other books, blogs, and interviews are great. We used their advice quite a lot at Opex.

2. Hard Things about Hard Things Like the author above, this author, and his firm Andreesen-Horowitz, provides great start-up advice. This is a solid book that gets into the details of running a company.

3. Founded. This is a how-to book for creating a start-up. See the review.

4. Flawless Consulting. If your start-up does consulting work, this is a good book for figuring out how to do it right.

5. Bonus Material: Paul Graham Essays are must-reads for start-ups. I probably read 75% of them. Be sure to go back several years to get specific advice for start-ups. He suggests that “Do things that don’t scale” is a good start. I used that advice a lot in growing Opex. I also liked “18 Mistakes that Kill Start-ups.”

My Favorite General Management Books

1. What Management Is. A short book that is an excellent introduction to what management is.

2. Never Split the Difference. An instant classic on negotiation. Written by a former high-stakes FBI hostage negotiator. Lots of good tips and a fun read.

3. Classic Drucker. Drucker should be part of any business book list. The articles have held up over time.

4. What Leaders Really Do. This is another classic. I’ve come back to this several times throughout my career.

5. Good to Great. I feel like Jim Collins should be on a list too. Well-researched book with interesting insights.

6. The Splendid and the Vile. See the review for details.

7. How to Win Friends and Influence People. I wasn’t sure this book fit in a post about business books. I’ve read this book a few times in my career. The advice stands the test of time.

Books Focused on One Company

1. Shoe Dog. Story of Nike in the early days. It was amazing how long it took for Nike to get big and make it.

2. Steve Jobs. This speaks for itself.

3. Hot Seat. If you read Jack Welch’s books (and they were wildly popular), this might be a good follow-up. I found the book honest and full of insights and learnings.

4. No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention. I know that Netflix is taking a hit in the stock market now, but the book is a good look at a new type of operating model. There are a lot of ideas that other companies may find valuable.

Innovation

This section needs a note. The first book is classic for everyone doing innovation. I used ideas from it throughout my career.

The following three books are about innovation across society, not advice for a firm or manager. They’ll have insights you’ll find helpful, but that isn’t the main point of the books.

1. The Innovator’s Dilemma. This is on my re-read list.

2. How Innovation Works. Fun fact: Typically, engineering comes first, and scientists later try to figure out why it worked.

3. Exponential Age. Fun fact: Many technologies are growing exponentially. Exponential growth is faster than you intuitively think it is- it will likely overwhelm you.

4. Open. Fun fact: The more open societies, the more they innovate. But, it is easy for open societies to close again.

Technical

1. Algorithms to Live By I gift this to friends and family who like math. It applies algorithms to common problems. It is a great way to learn about algorithms.

2. Naked Statistics. I think there are a lot of books explaining statistics to the general audience. I read and liked this one.

3. Uncontrolled. I debated about putting this in. It is pretty dense— I felt like I had to read each page twice. It teaches how we know things- and talks a lot about randomized control tests.

4. Model Building in Mathematical Programming. The experts recommend this book if you are new to linear programming and want to know more.

5. Practical Guide to e-auctions. I put this book in the technical section because it dives deep into e-auctions.

6. Inventory Optimization. A technical deep dive into the formulas behind inventory formulas.

7. Serious Play This is not a technical book. But, if you build models, this book looks at how organizations interact with models.

My Approach to Reading Non-Fiction

Since it is easy to forget books, I’ve done two things over the last five years.

First, I read physical copies and take notes in the book. This has allowed me to return to books I’ve liked, refresh my memory on the essential parts, and re-read a few key pages.

Second, I’m willing to re-read a book. I’ve heard prolific readers mention that you should re-read the books you like. Someone suggested that at some point in your life, you should stop reading new books and re-read your favorite 100 books. You’ll understand the books better and find new lessons since you have also changed.

These things slow you down— it takes longer to read a book when you take notes. And re-reading a book means you aren’t reading a new book.

I also spend a lot of time reading reviews or getting recommendations from others before starting a book. Finally, I’m more willing to walk away from a book or put it down for a few years until I’m in a better spot to give it the proper attention.

1. For some strange reason, I started writing down every book I’ve read since 1998. From the graph, you can see when I had three kids under 6 (2008) and when we started Opex (2013, and the kids were still young).

Extrapolating that data for my adult life, I’m guessing I’ve read about 400 books. And the data suggest that about half of those books were business books.