11 Fascinating Books on Harvard Business
School's Required Reading List
There's no better time to revamp your reading list than the beginning of
the summer. The question is ... what should you read?
With so many business books out there to choose from, sifting
through all those online descriptions and reviews could take up an entire
summer in and of itself. We figured you'd rather spend that time actually,
you know, reading.
To help you narrow down your search for the best business books out
there, we combed through a plethora of online syllabi from Harvard Business
School. Much to my surprise, most of the books centered around leadership
rather than economics, marketing, or general business best practices. It really
does take a fearless leader to build a truly remarkable organization.
Below, you'll find a list of 11 of the most intriguing
books on Harvard Business School courses' required reading lists. If
you're looking for a few great summer reads, then this is just the list for
you.
1) True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership
This book explains how and why becoming a genuine leader is possible for
anyone and everyone. True North is based on research and
first-person interviews with 125 of today’s top leaders. In this book, former
Medtronic CEO Bill George shares the wisdom for being an
authentic leader by outlining five key steps: 1) knowing your authentic self;
2) defining your values and leadership principles; 3) understanding your
motivations; 4) building your support team; and 5) staying grounded by
integrating all aspects of your life.
2) Talent on Demand
Peter Cappelli wrote this book to examine common talent management
issues. It includes a slew of supply chain company examples and reveals
four management principles for ensuring that your employees have the
skills they need, exactly when they need them. After reading this
book, you'll know how to balance developing talent in-house
with hiring external employees, improve the accuracy of your talent-need
forecasts, maximize productivity of your employees, and replicate an external
job board by creating an internal one for current employees.
3) The Money of Invention: How Venture Capital Creates New
Wealth
This practical guide is written by two industry experts (Paul A. Gompers
and Josh Lerner) about the problems entrepreneurs encounter when securing
financing, and how the venture capital model can help businesspeople to resolve
those issues. It also includes details on how corporations, government
institutions and non-profits can (and should) harness the power of the venture
capital model when applying it in their own industries. Whether
your industry is riding the way of massive growth or holding on
during an economic slowdown, this book is a tactical guide for leveraging
venture captial to begin or grow your business.
4) Many Unhappy Returns: One Man's Quest To Turn Around The
Most Unpopular Organization In America
In 1997, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had the largest customer
base in America -- but also the lowest approval rating of any government
agency. At the time, congressional
hearings revealed that IRS agents were being pressured to
meet quotas for back taxes and penalties. Some agents admitted anonymously
that, in order to hit these quotas, tax collectors would squeeze taxpayers for
money they didn’t really owe. Charles O. Rossotti became commissioner of the
IRS in 1997 and was tasked with rebuilding the organization. He
was the first businessperson to head the IRS, and in this book, he
tells the remarkable story of leadership and transformation of this
organization.
5) The Arc of Ambition: Defining the Leadership Journey
Can you guess what separates the average from from the hugely
successful? Two internationally renowned management experts (Jim Champy
and Nitin Nohria) say the key ingredient is ambition. Their book The
Arc of Ambition is a practical guide to harnessing your personal and
professional ambition and leaving a legacy of accomplishment. It details
examples from dozens of modern and also historical successful people from a
multitude of industries.
6) Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One
Cup at a Time
I've gotta come clean and reveal this book wasn't actually on any of the
syllabi I researched. But case studies about Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz were
basically plastered all over them, which is why I'm including this in here.
Schultz an exceptional and highly respected leader, and his book details
one of the most triumphant business stories in decades. Starbucks started as a
single coffee shop in Seattle and has grown into a worldwide corporation. In
the book, Schultz illustratres the founding principles that defined Starbucks
and shares the wisdom he's learned along the way.
7) Unleasing Innovation: How Whirlpool Transformed an
Industry
Unleashing Innovation tells
the inside story of one of the most successful innovation turnarounds in
American history, including reducing margins while also expanding internationally. Nancy
Tennant Snyder is VP of innovation and margin realization at Whirlpool and the
author of this book. In it, she reveals how Whirlpool undertook one of the
largest change efforts in the company's history. It demonstrates
how transformation and innovation became a core component of the
organization, which ultimately lead to bottom-line results.
8) Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
Why do some ideas thrive while others seem like they never even had a
chance to survive? And how the heck can we boost ideas to give them a fighting
chance? In this book, written by accomplished educators and
brothers Chip and Dan Heath, they tackle head-on perplexing questions
related to how ideas take off. Research is revealed to explain ways to
make ideas stickier.
9) Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market
Space and Make Competition Irrelevant
This book is based on a study of more than 150 strategic moves,
including companies that have spanned more than a hundred years and thirty
industries. Authors W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne attempt to persuade readers
that building a true successful business comes from creating "blue
oceans," i.e. untapped new markets that are hyper-ripe from growth. More
than one million copies of this business book have sold world wide, and it's a
"must-read" for business readers.
10) Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling
for Less
In Scaling Up Excellence, bestselling author Robert Sutton
and Stanford colleague Huggy Rao tackle a challenge every growing organization
faces at one time of another: scaling. It's about building your company larger,
faster, and more efficiently than ever before. Sutton and Rao
devoted nearly ten years of researching to uncovering what it takes to
build employees for exemplary performance and keep recharging
organizations with ever better workplaces. This book features both case
studies and academic research from a wealth of industries, including startups,
pharmaceuticals, retail, financial services, high-tech, education, non-profits,
government, and healthcare.
11) Data Science for Business
Written by two world-renowned data science experts Foster Provost and
Tom Fawcett, this book explains the foundational principles of data
science. Step-by-step, it walks readers through the "data-analytic
thinking" necessary for extracting real business value from the any
data an organization collects. You can use it as a guide to understand the
many data-mining techniques in use today. It's based on an MBA course one
of the authors taught at New York University for over a decade, and is chock-full
of real-world business problems.
Written by Lauren Hintz
http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/harvard-business-school-books-reading-list#sm.000x1zsuj14s3d5w10kxgrz2qahk9
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