10 recommended books about entrepreneurship
1. Lean Startup - Eric Ries
This is a great book for coming entrepreneurs and teaches an important method for creating new ventures. The main concept is centered around build-measure-learn.
If you have an idea, you need to build a prototype that can generate new knowledge about your idea. Based on the product you need to measure the response and extract valuable insights.
The book also touches on other important concepts such as vanity metrics, innovation accounting, different types of growth strategies, how and when to pivot and many other concepts.
Highly recommended: Amazon UK
2. Zero to One - Peter Thiel
Zero to one focused on how to create and scale new companies by getting what Peter Thiel calls a creative monopoly. Without a form of monopoly or unique advantage, it is difficult to create a highly scalable company. The monopoly can be created through proprietary technology, branding, network effect or operational excellency.
Where the Lean Startup focuses on the next step, Zero to one focuses on how to work with the larger vision.
Highly recommended: Amazon UK
3. Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur
Business Model generation is probably the most used book working with entrepreneurship. It is based around the idea of sketching your business plan in a single page diagram. The basic idea is that things developed so fast, so the entrepreneur needs an easy to create an update overview of the current business.
Because, the concept is easy to grasp, it is also easy to use the wrong way and fill it out as an end goal instead of using it as a working companion.
Highly recommended: Amazon UK
4. Blue Ocean Strategy, Chan Kim and Renée Maubourgne
Blue ocean strategy is about how to create a company that compete in new market instead of competitive markets. The book has several tools for identifying new opportunities by changing different parameter of a company’s value proposition.
The image of a company being in a blue ocean compared to a competitor infested red ocean is tempting, but inventing a new market comes with the cost of market and convincing the customers that the new offering satisfies a need.
Highly recommend: Amazon UK
5. Disclosing new worlds - Entrepreneurship, democratic action, and the cultivation of solidarity
While this might not be the easiest book to read, the points in the book are strong. The book points to a tendency to detach one-self from what is happening in the world and argues for a stronger involvement in what they call “history making”.
The book describes how to develop a sensitivity to the abnormalities in people’s everyday life and how to act on them.
Recommend for people interested in the theory behind entrepreneurship: Amazon UK
6. The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz
This is not the first book you should read as an entrepreneur, but it is recommended for people who have been in the trenches for a while. It describes some of the difficult situation you faces as a founder about hiring, firing, creating company culture, and managing a start-up and the examples and suggestions are highly relevant and give you a sense of “a-ha” I am not the only one facing this problem.
Recommended to start-up founders with some experience: Amazon UK
7. Crossing the chasm, Geoffrey A. Moore
This is a great book for all start-ups, and it describes what happens to many start-ups. At one point they meet a chasm where in order to keep growing, they need to rethink their value proposition. In the early stage they need to recruit early adaptors, but later they need to appeal to the mainstream market. The book presents a set of tools for making the transition from early to mainstream market.
Highly recommend: Amazon UK
8. Effectual Entrepreneurship
A handbook about entrepreneurship based on research on the habits and approaches used by expert entrepreneurs. The approach is called Effectual Entrepreneurship and starts with the resources the entrepreneur has at hand and expands from there on. Please also check effectuation.org for additional information
Highly recommend: Amazon UK
9. The Rainforest, Victor W. Huang & Greg Horowitt
This book studies entrepreneurial ecosystems and outlines some of the characteristics of successful entrepreneurial ecosystem mainly based on Silicon Valley.
Recommend to people working on building ecosystems: Amazon UK
10. Zone to Win, Geoffrey A. Moore
This book is about innovation in large companies and deals with how innovation initiatives belongs to different innovation zones. It points to some of the difficulties of altering the course of an existing company and points to some tools needed in order to make a defensive or offensive move against a potential disruptive incumbent.
Recommend to people working with intrapreneurship: Amazon UK
⇒ What to watch next? “Recommended Startup Youtube Channels” ⇐
About Kite Invent
Kite Invent is a consultancy company working with innovation through entrepreneurship.
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