15 Books Every Entrepreneur Should Read in 2020
How many books do you read per year? Do you have any number as a goal for 2020? Reading is a secret weapon for successful entrepreneurs. It’s the best way to learn about all relevant topics for developing a business.
Finding the right book to read can be tough. In order to make your life easier, we got 15 book recommendations from top-notch professionals that are mentors at the Arab Innovation Academy, in Qatar. Let’s find out!
1. Passion & Purpose: Stories From The Best and Brightest Business Leaders
Author: Daniel Gulati et Al.
Recommended by Matt Kupper
Globalization. Sustainability. Technology. Diversity. Learning. Convergence of the public and private sectors. These are the big issues on the minds of young leaders today—the challenges they most want to, and must, pursue.
In Passion and Purpose, dozens of recent Harvard Business School MBAs share personal stories on assuming the mantle of leadership in ways unlike any previous generation. In candid accounts of their successes and setbacks—from launching start-ups to taking on the family business to helping kids in the Arabian Gulf to harnessing new technology and developing clean energy—they reveal how the next generation of ideas, aspirations, and practices are shaping business and redefining leadership around the world. (Amazon)
Passion and Purpose offers profound insight into the values and vision of tomorrow’s leaders, and inspiration and ideas for all aspiring leaders who hope to lead change in the world.
2. The Man Who Wanted To Be Happy
Author: Laurent Gounelle
Recommended by Gyorgyi Pretz
While on a relaxing vacation in Bali, Julian decides to consult a legendary and wise healer whose reputation precedes him. The old Master Samtyang’s diagnosis on meeting the schoolteacher is firm: you are healthy, but you are not . . . happy.
During the series of daily encounters that follow, Samtyang meets with Julian and shares cryptic messages, much to the frustration of his new student. In his unusual manner, Samtyang shows Julian—and us—how our thoughts shape our lives and how what we believe becomes our reality. His teachings on the nature of true happiness, which is already inside us; the manifestation of our hopes and dreams, which are closer than we think; and the most thrilling adventure of all, self-discovery, offer unforgettable lessons that linger long past the final page.A worldwide, word-of-mouth sensation, The Man Who Wanted to Be Happy explores the world of new possibilities available to us when we discover how to break free from whatever prevents us from truly being happy. (Amazon)
3. Disciplined Entrepreneurship
Author: Bill Aulet
Recommended by Ali El Amrani
Disciplined Entrepreneurship will change the way you think about starting a company. Many believe that entrepreneurship cannot be taught, but great entrepreneurs aren’t born with something special – they simply make great products. This book will show you how to create a successful startup through developing an innovative product. It breaks down the necessary processes into an integrated, comprehensive, and proven 24-step framework that any industrious person can learn and apply. (Booktopia)
4. Running Lean
Author: Ash Mauryal
Recommended by Mohammed Zebian
We live in an age of unparalleled opportunity for innovation. We’re building more products than ever before, but most of them fail–not because we can’t complete what we set out to build, but because we waste time, money, and effort building the wrong product.
What we need is a systematic process for quickly vetting product ideas and raising our odds of success. That’s the promise of Running Lean.
5. 7 Habits for Highly Effective People
Author: Stephen Corey
Recommended by Jorim Holtey-Weber
The book presents a principle-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and pointed anecdotes, Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, honesty and human dignity – principles that give us the security to adapt to change and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates. (Amazon)
6. Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
Author: Simon Sinek
Recommended by Rodrigo de Alvarenga
Start with Why analyses leaders like Martin Luther King Jr and Steve Jobs and discovers that they all think in the same way – they all started with why. Simon Sinek explains the framework needed for businesses to move past knowing what they do to how they do it, and then to ask the more important question-WHY? (eBay)
7. The Infinite Game
Author: Simon Sinek
Recommended by Rodrigo de Alvarenga
In The Infinite Game, Sinek applies game theory to explore how great businesses achieve long-lasting success. He finds that building long-term value and healthy, enduring growth – that playing the infinite game – is the only thing that matters to your business. (Amazon)
8. The Startup Owner’s Manual
Author: Steve Blank and Bob Dorf
Recommended by Rodrigo de Alvarenga
The Startup Owner’s Manual is a step-by-step, near-encyclopedic reference manual or “how to” for building a successful, scalable startup. (GoodReads.com)
9. The Crossroads Between Should and Must: Find and Follow Your Passion
Author: Elle Luna
Recommended by Natalie Nixon
Who hasn’t asked the question “How can I find and follow my true calling?” Elle Luna frames this moment as “standing at the crossroads of Should and Must.” “Should” is what we feel we ought to be doing, or what is expected of us. “Must” is the thing we dream of doing, our heart’s desire. And it was her own personal journey that inspired Elle Luna to write a brief online manifesto that, in a few short months, has touched hundreds of thousands of people who’ve read it or heard Elle speak on the topic. Now Ms. Luna expands her ideas into an inspirational, highly visual gift book for every recent graduate, every artist, every seeker, every career changer. (Amazon)
10. Design the life you love
Author: Ayse Birsel
Recommended by Natalie Nixon
Life, just like a design problem, is full of constraints–time, money, age, location, and circumstances. You cannot have everything, and if you want more out of it, you have to be creative about how to make what you need and what you want co-exist. This requires design thinking. Design the Life You Love uses a simple but proven creative thinking and design process to give ordinary people new tools to think about life differently, and also includes fascinating examples from the world of art and design that relate to each step of the process, plus guided creative exercises. Turn constraints into opportunities with optimism and holistic thinking using four simple steps: taking the whole apart, forming a new point of view, putting it back together, and giving it form. The striking design and Ayse Birsel’s hand-drawn art and type set off her brilliant, life-changing design process, empowering and inspiring readers to create a better life. (Booktopia)
11. A More Beautiful Question
Author: Warren Berger
Recommended by Natalie Nixon
In this groundbreaking book, journalist and innovation expert Warren Berger shows that one of the most powerful forces for igniting change in business and in our daily lives is a simple, under-appreciated tool—one that has been available to us since childhood.Questioning—deeply, imaginatively, “beautifully”—can help us identify and solve problems, come up with game-changing ideas, and pursue fresh opportunities. So why are we often reluctant to ask “Why?” (Google Books)
12. Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers
Author: Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur
Recommended by Rick Rasmussen
Business Model Generation is a handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers striving to defy outmoded business models and design tomorrow’s enterprises. If your organization needs to adapt to harsh new realities, but you don’t yet have a strategy that will get you out in front of your competitors, you need Business Model Generation. (Amazon)
13. Value Proposition Design
Author: Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Gregory Bernada, Alan Smith and Trish Papadakos.
Recommended by Rick Rasmussen
Value Proposition Design helps you tackle the core challenge of every business — creating compelling products and services customers want to buy. This highly practical book, paired with its online companion, will teach you the processes and tools you need to create products that sell.
14. Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs
Author: John Doerr
Recommended by Rick Rasmussen
In Measure What Matters, Doerr shares a broad range of first-person, behind-the-scenes case studies, with narrators including Bono and Bill Gates, to demonstrate the focus, agility, and explosive growth that OKRs have spurred at so many great organizations. This book will help a new generation of leaders capture the same magic. (Amazon)
15. The Hard Things About Hard Things
Author: Ben Horowitz
Recommended by Rick Rasmussen
Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley’s most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, offers essential advice on building and running a startup—practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn’t cover, based on his popular ben’s blog. (Google Books)
Have you read any of this list? Check our blog to learn more about entrepreneurship from our star mentors!
