Must-read business books to kickstart the new year
- Featured Lifestyle
Arushi Sakhuja
- 9 minutes read
Arushi Sakhuja
As you enter a new year, setting the right intentions and working harder towards your personal and professional goals is imperative. Whether you want to feel more courageous, implement new habits for your daily routine, stop worrying or become more productive, self-help books can help you unlock your potential. From memoirs to mental decluttering guides, business skills to entrepreneurship, here is your go-to list of enriching books to help you grow.
Fall in Love with the Problem, not the Solution by Uri Levine
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This is a book written by a successful entrepreneur who offers great teachings for other entrepreneurs. The book emphasizes that entrepreneurs should focus on figuring out the problem first, falling in love with the problem, and then finding an appropriate solution. Levine provides useful insights on firing and hiring, raising funds, understanding users, achieving product-market fit, making scale-up decisions, going global, and deciding when to sell. The book, “Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution,” offers mentorship to aspiring entrepreneurs from one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs. It empowers readers to build a successful business by identifying consumers’ biggest problems and disrupting inefficient markets that currently serve them.
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No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer
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This might be one of the most enriching books for this generation. In No Rules Rules, Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer reveal the fascinating story of Netflix’s success, while providing actionable lessons for leaders. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with current Netflix employees and never-before-told stories from his own career, Hastings elaborates on controversial principles (Trust your team. Be radically honest. And never, ever try to please your boss) at the heart of the Netflix psyche, which has generated results that are the envy of the business world. This is the full, fascinating, and untold story of a unique company taking over the world. Reed Hastings, Netflix Chairman and CEO is sharing the secrets that have revolutionised the entertainment and tech industries. With INSEAD business school professor Erin Meyer, he will explore his leadership philosophy – which begins by rejecting the accepted beliefs under which most companies operate – and how it plays out in practice at Netflix. From unlimited holidays to abolishing approvals, Netflix offers a fundamentally different way to run any organisation, one far more in tune with an ever-changing fast-paced world.
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Build by Tony Fadell
Building a team, a company or a business is a skill and the book is an unorthodox guide to making things worth making. From understanding the importance of a mentor to choosing a job being a better manager and how to start a company, this is one of the most enriching books. Tony Fadell has enough stories and advice about leadership, design, startups, mentorship, decision-making, and devastating decisions, and thus this book is an advice encyclopedia. But Tony doesn’t follow the standard concept of radically reinventing everything you do, he keeps it simple. His advice is unorthodox because it’s old school. Because it’s based on human nature, not gimmicks.
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie is a timeless masterpiece that offers readers a guide to personal and professional success. At its core, Carnegie’s work magnifies effective human interaction, equipping readers with invaluable skills to navigate the complexities of social and professional relationships. The book unfolds as a practical manual for those seeking to enhance their social acumen. Through engaging anecdotes and practical advice, Carnegie imparts wisdom on the art of communication, emphasizing the importance of empathy, understanding, and genuine connection.
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Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0 by Jim Collins
Jim Collins has updated his classic book, Beyond Entrepreneurship. This new version, called BE 2.0, has all kinds of new discoveries and important ideas that could change the world. The main question the book tries to answer is: How do you build a company that not only survives when it’s just starting but also does really well, making a big impact for a long time? Jim Collins brings together all the important ideas he has learned in thirty years of research into something he calls “The Map.” The book contains enduring principles which help one think big about how you want to build a company and how to ensure that it becomes a great company and one that is built to last.
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The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward by Daniel H. Pink
Talking about enriching books, Daniel Pink’s The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward talks about regret and how it can actually help us grow. Through the book Pink wants us to see regret not just as something that makes us sad but as a signpost that guides our choices and pushes us towards a better future. With his clever and wise way of writing, Pink explores regret, breaking it down into different parts and showing how it can affect our lives. Pink talks about how regret can actually be good for us in building resilience, coming up with new things, and finding a purpose in life. He argues that by looking at and learning from the things we wish we had done differently, we can become stronger and live a more authentic and meaningful life.
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So what’s on your list of enriching books to read in 2024?
