My 10 All-Time Favorite Business/Science Books

Increasingly, people ask me about my favorite non-fiction books of all time. The authors with the biggest impact on my life and vision are Gary Hamel+Prahalad, Jared Diamond and Kevin Kelly.

Here we go in random order:

• Smart Mobs by Howard Rheingold (2002)
• Out of Control - The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World by Kevin Kelly (1993)
• Competing for the Future by Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad (1994)
• Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler (2006)
• Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins (2006)
• The Engaged Customer - Using the New Rules of Internet Direct Marketing for Profitable Customer Relationships by Hans Peter Brondmo (2002)
• The Experience Economy by Joseph Pine II and James Gilmore (1998)
• Radical Evolution by Joel Garreau (2005)
• Guns, Germs and Steel - The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond (1999)
• Collapse - How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond (2005)

Comments

[Maarten Lens-FitzGerald]

Why?

[Yuri van Geest]

Good question. Here we go:

Jared Diamond -> amazing breadth of knowledge, innovative, inspiring, learnings for survival of organisms on different levels of analysis

Gary Hamel -> ground breaking strategy (5 forces migration model), visionary, creative, open minded, eternal, broad scope, more complete view on humans and organisations

Howard Rheingold -> top visionary, broad scope, on the edge, scientific, GeoWeb/AR/locative media frontrunner

Kevin Kelly -> visionary, breadth of knowledge, inspiring, putting biology as THE discipline of the 21th century while pushing complexity theory and networks

Joseph Pine II -> great contributions in the fields of marketing and strategy with the focus on experiences and transformation

Joel Garreau -> great visions of Bill Joy, Ray Kurzweil and Jaron Lanier, style of writing, creative, inspiring. A great story about transformative powers within individuals

Yochai Benkler -> scientific rigor, completeness, complete guide to web 2.0 and legal issues within digital media

Henry Jenkins -> inspiring, complete, innovative story on old and new media

Hans Peter Brondmo -> visionary, complete, practical and unique story on permission based marketing with quantitative rigor within digital markets (e-mail, SMS, IM, etc.)

[Allen]

Check out some management books that are satirized at a blog called The Cantankerous Consultant:

http://cantankerousconsultant.blogspot.com/