The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself and Transform Your Career
By Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha, February 2012, Crown Business
The book highlights the importance of thinking like an entrepreneur in today’s economy whether you’re trying to start a bakery, land your dream job or launch a freelance career.
The book is based on the premise that the economy, and work as we know it, may never be the same again. Instability is the new normal, and we can either embrace this or wait for the other shoe to drop. The authors provide a variety of tips one can implement today to ride the wave instead of being swept under.
Think and Grow Rich
By Napoleon Hill, December 2013
Not for entrepreneurs only, this old inspirational classic teaches the power of the human mind for high achievement and service in whatever field one chooses.
Think and Grow Rich is often considered the most important financial book ever written.
The author studied more than 40 millionaires to find out what made them tick and stand out. In this book he imparts that knowledge to readers.
It provides insights on why certain people have an edge over the rest. An individual can be the one with an edge by following advice laid out in the book. “It’s time to stop wondering what it’s like to be rich and start knowing. This book will change lives,” according to one blurb.
Well-known author and lecturer Og Mandino confirms the book’s life-changing power: “During the past 25 years I have been blessed with more good fortune than any individual deserves but I shudder to think where I’d be today, or what I’d be doing if I had not been exposed to Napoleon Hill’s philosophy. It changed my life. “
The Lean Start-up
By Eric Ries, September 2011
The book defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a corporate setting. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business.
The Lean Start-up approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and utilizes human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to complicated metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute.
Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Start-up offers entrepreneurs – in companies of all sizes – a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late.