For many, spring symbolizes new growth and regeneration. Budding plants and the change in season. Birds making their return back. You name it – change is in the air. It also reminds us to get out of our own shell and start working on our own personal growth goals. So why not use it as an excuse to kick start your business education and create a spring/summer reading list to inspire your growth.
We asked our staff what some of their favourite business books were, here are their top 10. We hope that they will motivate, educate and inspire you.
1. The Innovators – Walter Isaacson
A revealing study about the people who created the world’s first computers and the Internet. This book takes you through the history of the digital revolution in a bid to discover how innovation really happens.
Written by the same biographer as Steve Jobs, this inspiring book about genius will explain how creativity and success come from collaboration.
2. Power of Why – Amanda Lang
The need to question everything is natural for kids. But, it’s something that is muted as we become adults in order to conform to society’s expectations. In this book, Amanda Lang challenges you to return to your child-like state and question everything, explaining our curiosity and the ability to ask the right questions leads to innovation and drives change.
Packed with insights, analysis and examples of a wide range of companies and individuals, this book will help spark your curiosity inspire positive change.
3. Redefining Success: Still Making Mistakes – Brett Wilson
Brett Wilson is one of Canada’s best-known businessmen and respected philanthropists and was one of the most popular Dragons’ on CBC’s Dragons’ Den. But, his journey to that success was not smooth. For many years, he pursued business with uncompromising focus, working long hours, and letting his marriage, children and health suffer. After the inevitable divorce and finding out he had cancer at just 43, Brett realized he needed to redefine his life.
This book explains how to re-evaluate your definition of success and working it into a life plan that is feasible, lasting and rewarding.
4. Losing My Virginity – Richard Branson
The Virgin brand was created when Richard Branson and his friends decided that as they were ‘virgins’ in business, it would be a perfect name for their business. Since then he has continued to break conformity and write his own rules for business.
His ventures have included Virgin Records, Virgin Atlantic Airways, Virgin Cola, Virgin Megastores. financial services, bridal wear and nearly a hundred others. The common theme? They were all saturated markets with entrenched competition. Each time he was told not to do it. Each time he found opportunities for success.
This book will show you how even the most successful businessmen can lead a productive life, filled with colourful stories and adventure.
5. All In – Arlene Dickinson
The life of an entrepreneur can be challenging. The emotional and physical demands of running your own business can affect your relationships and your mental health. In this book CBC Dragon, Arlene Dickenson, explains how to thrive the entrepreneurial lifestyle and how to avoid its pitfalls.
Topics include the dangers of believing your own hype, how to ignore the naysayers, and the importance of not ignoring them. She also explains how the need to control everything in your business can be its point of failure. Packed with examples from her own business experience, this books hopes to help you achieve independence both financially and the psychologically – through the pride of charting your own course.
6. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Steven R. Covey
This is not a new book by any means. Originally launched in 1990, it is something of a cult classic in the business world.
The principle-centered 7 Habits philosophy will help you find solutions to both personal and professional problems, helping you lead a life of fairness, integrity, honesty and dignity. It offers a systematic approach explaining each of the habits and teaching you how to put them into action every day.
7. The E-Myth Revisited – Michael E. Gerber
Originally published in 1986, this book explains that entrepreneurs are typically brimming with ideas but make poor business people. The author takes you through an organized and regimented plan for your business that, when in place, will leave your mind free to build the long-term success of your business.
8. Good To Great – Jim Collins
Good to Great analyses why some companies make the leap to greatness and some do not. After studying 6,000 articles, thousands of pages of interview transcripts and 384 MB of computer data, Jim Collins explains what makes a company great, the characteristics of a great leader and how to hire the right people.
9. McDonald’s: Behind The Golden Arches – John F. Love
It’s impossible to not recognize the iconic brand of McDonald’s and the effect both its business model and trend setting advertising has had on modern history. This book is not just about its Founder and CEO, Ray Kroc, but about all the people involved in the McDonald’s empire. It’s a business who has fared many a business storm, only to keep riding its wave of success. This book will be of particular interest if you are considering buying a franchise, or franchising your own business, as it describes their expansion into untapped foreign markets and how individual entrepreneurship of franchise owners has helped the entire business.
10. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant – W. Chan Kim
This book challenges the traditional thoughts of business. That success is defined on the competition battlefield, where businesses struggle for market share and differentiation, leaving only a bloody sea and limited profits. They instead insist you must create your own ‘blue ocean’. An untapped market that is ripe for growth. Taking you through their strategic approach, you will learn how to create this ocean for your own business and a winning future.
Books can be a great way to expand your horizons, provoke ideas and give inspiration. So find some time and a quiet space, so grow and strengthen your business knowledge. And when you’re done, we’ll be publishing another ten books that should be in your beach bag this summer.