The incredible autobiography of Debbi Fields, a mother who had 3 children by the age of 21 and no formal education about finance or business, successfully built a multi-million dollar empire of 500+ stores in 5 countries across 4 continents. Lessons and tips are also included in this concise read.
The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
A light overview and introduction into team dynamics and organizational behaviour. I found this book overly simplistic and not overly insightful. Of course, I am biased as my background, training, and education(BCom, MBA) have already introduced me to these concepts and ideas. I recommend this book as a short intro that can be finished in an afternoon sitting over coffee or during a business flight. A better book with greater insights would be "Group Dynamics for Teams" by Daniel Levi.
Overcoming Organizational Defenses : Facilitating Organizational Learning
The Opposable Mind
Paradigm changing insights come from bringing together and holding opposing ideas and mental models rather than choosing one and refuting the other. The nature of one's profession, education, and experience makes it impossible to consider features of a problem that might be relevant to another profession. No one model is perfect, they all make logical sense - from a particular angle.
"Opposing models are the richest source of new insight into a problem. We learn nothing from someone who sees the problem exactly as we do"
The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage
Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation
From Concept to Consumer
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
A slow start but a strong finish is how I characterize this book. This book explores the author's thoughts on the business side of running a startup. The author highlights the critical role of product management, marketing, sales, and branding in the success of a tech startup. Too many founders ignore or pay too little attention to the customer.
Product Leadership: How Top Product Managers Launch Awesome Products and Build Successful Teams
INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love
One of the best books out there on Technology Product Management for Product Managers. This is really a compilation of knowledge, lessons learned, and words of wisdom on being a product manager. Several chapters are too light but nevertheless serve as a starting point to learn more. Better books are available that provide deeper dives on topics this book only lightly touches on. Essential “intro” book for aspiring Product Managers.
Observing the user experience : a practitioner's guide to user research
Netnography: Doing Ethnographic Research Online
An essential how-to book for practitioners such as product managers, product marketers, marketing professionals to better understand their users in online communities through Applied Ethnography. From understanding and managing online communities to learning how your product/services are perceived, this book details methods to gather, analyze, and interpret data for User Research, User Discovery, and Needs Discovery. Written by Schulich MBA prof Robert V. Kozinets.
Essentials of Negotiation
The most comprehensive book on negotiation there is and yet, concise and easy to read and follow for the practitioner. Theories are covered with an emphasis on real world application. Responding to Take it or Leave it approach, Manufactured Anger, working with more powerful sides, etc are all covered. I had the good fortune to study and practice under Kevin Tasa, the book's author and instructor for my Schulich MBA negotiation class.
Making it Right: product management for a startup world
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
An essential read. The book reveals, in an unvarnished way, what life in the C-suite can be like. While b-school grads will not learn anything new and will easily recognize concepts, the value from reading this book is in learning how those concepts play out in the real, fast paced, competitive world of a tech business. This book made me realize just how valuable a b-school education is especially in HR and Organizational Behaviour. Many lessons the author learned the hard way could have been learned in the b-school classroom.
The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing
THE essential book on practical pricing strategies that all product managers and product marketers should have. Incredible detail and insights at just the right level for both the novice and the seasoned. Well structured and not overly academic or theoretical. Essential resource for product managers to have with examples of applications and use cases.
The $100 Startup
Crossing the Chasm
Excellent book on product marketing strategy for the technology world. The book describes and offers proven strategies for overcoming one of the key problems that tech companies face affecting their survival - getting a product into the mainstream market after successfully winning over Innovators and Early Adopters. Primarily aimed for B2B, the ideas and concepts can also be applied to B2C as well. Essential must read for those in tech or who want to get into tech. Get the 3rd edition.