Useful books to read next
There are vast numbers of books written on each of the topics we cover here. Here are a few useful ones to get you started, a mixture of texts as well as seminal contributions from luminaries in the field.
Management
Leading Change by John P. Kotter (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012)
Kotter is probably the leading authority on change management. This is his guide to how leaders achieve change.
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (Penguin, 2012)
This book is the definitive guide to behavioural psychology, from the Nobel Laureate who helped to create the field.
Organizational Behavior by Stephen Robbins and Timothy Judge (Pearson, 16th edition, 2014)
There are many good overview textbooks on organisational behaviour – this is one of the most well known and longest-established of them.
Managing by Henry Mintzberg (Financial Times/Prentice Hall, 2011)
Mintzberg has written many books on management in a 50-year career; this recent one summarises everything he has found.
Marketing and operations
Marketing Management by Philip T. Kotler and K.L. Keller (Pearson, 15th edition, 2015)
Kotler has been the top marketing guru for decades and this book is still the must-read text for students of marketing.
Influence: The psychology of persuasion by Robert Cialdini (HarperBusiness, 2007)
This book explains all the clever tricks marketers use to get people to buy their products.
The Long Tail by Chris Anderson (Hyperion Books, 2006)
Many recent books have examined how marketing changes as a result of the internet. This book was one of the first, and is still one of the best.
Positioning: The battle for your mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout (McGraw-Hill Education, 2001)
An all-time classic marketing book, it explains how segmentation and positioning work.
Strategy
Blue Ocean Strategy: How to create uncontested market space and make the competition irrelevant by W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne (Harvard Business Review Press, 2015)
This book provides a definitive guide to how you define a distinctive and novel strategy.
Contemporary Strategy Analysis by Robert M. Grant (John Wiley & Sons, 2015)
A classic textbook, which does the best job of surveying the entire field of strategy.
Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard P. Rumelt (Profile Books Ltd, 2012)
An overview and critique of the various schools of strategy thinking, by one of the founders of the field.
Good to Great by Jim Collins (Random House Business, 2001)
This book is about strategy implementation – how to get your organisation mobilised around a distinctive purpose.
Innovation and entrepreneurship
Innovation and Entrepreneurship by John Bessant and Joe Tidd (John Wiley & Sons, 3rd edition, 2015)
A comprehensive text, looking at all the different aspects of innovation from a corporate and individual-entrepreneur perspective.
The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen (Harvard Business Review Press, 2016)
The original book on ‘disruptive’ technologies, which made Christensen world famous.
The New Business Road Test by John Mullins (FT Press, 2013)
A very good overview textbook for anyone who wants to start a new business.
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries (Portfolio Penguin, 2011)
The hottest idea in the world of entrepreneurship today.
Finance
Investment Valuation: Tools and techniques for determining the value of any asset by Aswath Damodaran (John Wiley & Sons, 2012)
Written by the expert in the field, Investment Valuation goes over valuation techniques and, importantly, alerts readers to the various risks involved and how to mitigate them.
Principles of Corporate Finance by Richard A. Brealey, Stewart C. Myers and Franklin Allen (McGraw-Hill Education, 2016)
One of the standard texts on corporate finance and asset valuation, written with the financial manager in mind.
Horngren’s Financial & Managerial Accounting, The Managerial Chapters by Tracie L. Miller-Nobles, Brenda L. Mattison and Ella Mae Matsumura (Pearson, 2015)
A good introduction to accounting and financial statement analysis.
Financial Markets and Institutions by Frederic S. Mishkin and Stanley Eakins (Pearson, 2015)
Aimed at improving the understanding of the world of finance outside the firm.