[HN Gopher] Business books are entertainment, not strategic tools
___________________________________________________________________
Business books are entertainment, not strategic tools
Author : ZeroTalent
Score : 509 points
Date : 2025-05-09 20:51 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (theorthagonist.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theorthagonist.substack.com)
| peterlk wrote:
| I think there are maybe 5 business books out there. I'm not sure
| how exactly I'd define the 5 different business books, but I
| think of you read 10-15 business books you've pretty much read
| them all. After a while, they all start boiling down to the same
| few points with differences in narrative content. If I were to
| take an unconsidered stab at a few of them: hard work + luck is
| about the closest formula anyone has found for success if applied
| over long time periods; you have to be disagreeable and believe
| in yourself, but not so disagreeable that you can't get along
| with anyone; people are important, and treating them well leads
| to better businesses (over long time periods); sometimes you get
| dealt a bad hand.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| Thanks, you just saved me half of my reading list!
| dentemple wrote:
| Don't forget the tried-and-true "Don't sell to your customers;
| listen for their actual needs" advice that's repeated ad
| nauseum in a thousand different ways by B2B experts who claim
| to have "cracked the code" to increasing sales.
| turnsout wrote:
| It's repeated because so few people actually talk to
| customers and meaningfully listen to them... But you're
| right, it has become overused.
|
| An interesting counterpoint to "listen to your customers" is
| The Innovator's Dilemma, which details how increasing profit
| and producing a better product for your customers can
| sometimes make a company vulnerable to disruption.
| calmbonsai wrote:
| I would also add taking steps to "increase luck surface area".
| One can't control luck and luck is, unfortunately, essential,
| but one can increase the opportunities for luck to play its
| part.
| airstrike wrote:
| one corollary is that "proximity is power". being around
| people who are successful increases the chances that you will
| be successful. easier said than done, however.
| mgw wrote:
| Where does the point of being disagreeable come from and what
| purpose does it serve in the business world, in your opinion or
| according to these books?
| anself wrote:
| You need at least one or two somewhat disagreeable folks in a
| team. Because without this, groupthink emerges, teams have
| too much inertia, they follow the assumed norm instead of
| challenging it for something better, they don't debate the
| options enough. That disagreeable energy, in the right dose,
| leads to better decisions. If you don't have it naturally,
| you can encourage someone to "play devil's advocate" in
| decision discussions (or do it yourself) and you'll find
| sometimes the devil's advocate is actually right.
| JohnnyHerz wrote:
| While there is certainly a lot of crap out there for business
| books, especially on sales/marketing and management, there are
| some core books that are must reads if you want to save 30 years
| of trial and error.
|
| 1. E-myth Revisited (absolute must read for small to midsize
| business owners) 2. Competitive Strategy 3. Discipline of Market
| Leaders 4. Good to Great 5. Built to Last
| 121789 wrote:
| Good to great and built to last are just classic survivorship
| bias in book form. They are interesting as history books but
| not as actual analysis. They are fun reads but not to be taken
| seriously
| calmbonsai wrote:
| I disagree on "Good to Great" and "Built to Last". In
| hindsight, they're classic extrapolations of survivorship-bias
| in a specific era of business instead of durable business
| practices. It should be more accurately titled as "Built to
| Fail" considering how those profiled companies have faltered or
| floundered.
|
| I highly recommend Buffett's letters to shareholders
| https://a.co/d/cc1ufM4 and Goldratt's "The Goal"
| https://a.co/d/iJjTf1y and Taleb's "Antifragile"
| https://a.co/d/4bjC74J . Aside from his mathematical
| treatment's of uncertainty (which are free), I wouldn't
| recommend any of Teleb's other books.
|
| "Let My People Go Surfing" https://a.co/d/2hq7ngp doesn't work
| for all business, but I really found it personally
| inspirational.
| pbh101 wrote:
| For me:
|
| - the goal
|
| - 5 dysfunctions of a team
|
| - the first 90 days
|
| A friend swears by:
|
| - atomic habits
|
| - seven habits of highly effective people
|
| (Slightly different genre but quite close)
| georgeecollins wrote:
| If you like anti-fragile, I really recommend Fooled by
| Randomness and Black Swan. The Black Swan is a good example
| of a book with a good original idea that gets repeated so
| often its almost conventional wisdom, except that half the
| people saying it are misusing the term because they didn't
| read the book.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Black Swan is one of those books that has definitely stuck
| with me even though it's been ~15 years since I read it.
|
| But I would consider it philosophy, not a "business book".
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > except that half the people saying it are misusing the
| term because they didn't read the book
|
| Oh, man, make that 95% and you would be describing The
| Innovator Dilemma.
|
| What is up with people that take those ideas they never
| bothered to read and insist they know them?
| ativzzz wrote:
| Tried to read antifragile but his writing came off as too
| egotistic for me to take seriously at the time
| mrbluecoat wrote:
| I also came to mention E-myth Revisited since its goal is to
| dissuade rather than promote. Same vibe as https://sive.rs/a
| monkeyelite wrote:
| The E-myth is good. It convinced me I do not want to run a
| business.
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| It may be a waste of time if you had lived long enough to
| experience vividly the ins and outs of the business world. Taking
| an extreme example, senior execs who had "climbed from the
| bottom" in international companies. These people have seen/lived
| a lot, so no business book can really impress them or show
| something they haven't already seen. On the flip side, there is a
| high number of young people eager to learn how things work in the
| business world, but they don't want to experience everything,
| every failure, the ups and downs, they want to cut corners. I
| think for that kind of people business books can add some value,
| especially the biographical ones. It doesn't need to be the
| biography of a CEO (e.g. Jobs'). The life story of a great
| salesperson can change your mindset forever.
| bpmct wrote:
| Yep. From the perspective of someone earlier in their career
| without all the "lived experience": Business books have helped
| me feel closer with (and better emphasize with) senior execs.
| I'm not necessarily trying to cut corners, but it helps in
| situations where I am expected to be a peer to folks who have
| been working much longer than I have.
|
| Business books are definitely not a perfect substitute for
| lived experience or having a mentor, but they have certainly
| helped me.
| d_silin wrote:
| "An ounce of practice beats a pound of theory, but a pound of
| practice needs an ounce of theory."
|
| Valid for any domain for book knowledge vs practical experience.
| s0rr0wskill wrote:
| this is true for pretty much anything in life honestly
| firesteelrain wrote:
| You could probably put books like _Team Topologies_ ,
| _Accelerate_ , and _The Phoenix Project_ in the same boat with
| this list of business entertainment set of books and arguably the
| _DevOps Handbook_ too
| pbh101 wrote:
| Familiar more with the first two and going to suggest there is
| a distinction between those and the phenomenon originally
| described in the thread (having read some others too)
|
| Reven that being said, there could be value in those 'repeat'
| books inasmuch as one framing/telling may resonate with some
| more than others and get the message through, even if same
| message through multiple books.
| rfarley04 wrote:
| Feels like it's the act of meditating on making things better,
| brought about by reading some unscientific and generally
| unimportant "framework" that matters more than the framework
| itself. Business books just force certain people to keep business
| improvement higher on their awareness. People who can keep that
| meditation high on their list without the books don't need the
| books.
| hinkley wrote:
| I made a transition about fifteen years ago to reading some
| books to review them in case someone asks me for a
| recommendation
|
| Preaching to the choir is still practice, and the choir learns
| new ways to say the same thing. It's not completely useless.
| redeux wrote:
| There are plenty of great business books out there that aren't
| pop business books. For every critique listed there's a
| corresponding book that covers the topic.
|
| I hope people don't expect to get an MBA's worth of content from
| a single book. Business is a subject that can be taught in
| schools or learned through self-study - either requires time and
| dedication. Whichever method you choose, you'll still need real-
| world experience to master it.
| jibal wrote:
| Read to the end ... he mentioned four examples of good books.
| redeux wrote:
| It's very poorly written then. It has a clickbait title and
| uses content that is easily dismissed before getting to the
| point.
| jibal wrote:
| No.
| jibal wrote:
| Bottom line: entrepreneurs writing books are trying to make a
| buck off of readers.
| abetaha wrote:
| I am always amazed how most business book authors take a simple
| idea that could be described in one page, and turn it into a 200+
| page book with popularizing narrative. What's more amazing is
| that the ideas are usually commonsense, but due to human nature
| are seldom practiced.
| jeron wrote:
| Naval has said most books could be essays and most essays could
| be tweets
| dmos62 wrote:
| What could tweets be?
| meekaaku wrote:
| emoji
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Insert lazy joke about how the whole of Xitter could be
| condensed into a single poo emoji.
|
| EDIT : Something related but slightly less wasteful of
| your time :
|
| Carmen by Stromae :
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKftOH54iNU
| plemer wrote:
| </joke>
| delian66 wrote:
| .
| tiffanyh wrote:
| I'd say most books period, not just business books - could be
| shortened to just a couple of pages.
| prewett wrote:
| Sure, but at some point you miss something. You could
| summarize "The Lord of the Rings" as "Frodo journeys with
| much effort to destroy the One Ring at Mt. Doom, but in the
| end claims it himself and Gollum accidentally destroys it for
| him." But the book is far more than plot.
|
| "The Iliad" is basically "Achilles gets insulted and sits out
| the battle, while everyone else tries to win everlasting
| glory through bravery until Achilles finally has had enough
| and kills Hector." But nobody is going to be reading that
| summary for 2500 years.
| econ wrote:
| I'm not much of a book reader. Someone told me that if they
| follow the style guide you only have to read the first sentence
| of each chapter. It was kinda mind blowing to read a bunch of
| example books he gave me. The funniest part was returning to a
| previous book to read more of one of the chapters. I apparently
| didn't know how [those] books work.
| Propelloni wrote:
| There is an old chestnut in scientific publishing: "Say what
| you are going to say, say it, say what you have said."
|
| This extends beyond the paragraph. You can get very far by
| reading the table of contents, the introduction and the
| conclusion of a scientific book. Dive in only if you need
| details or quotes ;)
| plemer wrote:
| Not exclusive to scientific publishing, either. Minto's
| Pyramid Principle is a classic in strategy consulting and
| includes this structure. Have slso heard it called "triple
| coat".
| Propelloni wrote:
| "Triple coat" is nice. I like it!
| alphazard wrote:
| As I see it there are 2 likely reasons for this.
|
| 1. You need enough paper to create an object with a noticeable
| mass that takes time to work all the way through. Too small or
| short and it doesn't feel worth it. Make it short enough and
| people could read it in the book store.
|
| 2. People are bad at applying a crystalized abstraction in day-
| to-day life. They are better at learning narratives and fitting
| the current situation to the closest learned narrative, and
| then acting out the part of the protagonist. Instead of
| explaining a statistic or explicit rule of thumb, it would be
| more effective to give a bunch of examples where someone
| successfully applies the rule and is rewarded. Those examples
| can take up many pages.
| ldoughty wrote:
| Point 1 is a good example of the GEICO jingle.
|
| People felt 5-10 minutes isn't enough time for something as
| serious as insurance.. but 25-30 is so long it turns people
| away... And then 5%, maybe even 10% savings isn't enough to
| go through the effort, but 25% seems unrealistic....
|
| You need a document long enough to seem informative and
| authoritative without being too extreme in any way... Then
| you can slap a price on it and call it a book!
| itake wrote:
| Many non-fiction books, you can get the gist by reading a
| blogger's summary, but I think the length of the book
| actually gives my brain time to digest and commit to
| permanent memory the idea(s) in the book.
|
| Reading a 3 minute summary, once, I will easily forget the
| knowledge. But reading about the idea with different stories
| and other auxiliary information help me retain the principles
| much faster.
| slt2021 wrote:
| Its not only the idea, but the history, and analysis of the
| author.
|
| Reading a book is not just "downloading a knowledge into
| your brain".
|
| Reading is more like executing a program and seeing
| dofferent result in dofferent people. People will reflect
| in a different way and come out with different takes,
| emphasize points, lessons, and takeaways
| progbits wrote:
| I feel the exact opposite. Slogging through all irrelevant
| filler in those books dilutes everything, and makes me
| impatient and unfocused, just fast-forwarding through.
| ghaff wrote:
| Crossing the Chasm can basically be summarized in a page or
| two. There's probably some value in actually reading the
| book if it's relevant to your space.
| vivzkestrel wrote:
| i have an amazing idea, lets take the top 1000 business
| books, condense their ideas down to 1 page each and remove
| all the fluff and sell this as a 1000 page book
| ekianjo wrote:
| Most books rehash the same ideas so you could compress it
| in a much shorter one
| smokel wrote:
| Here you go:
|
| "Focus on value creation. Execution beats ideas.
| Leadership and culture matter."
| foobahhhhh wrote:
| Extreme! but a calendar with one of these a day plus a
| paragraph to explain would be pretty good.
| hurtuvac78 wrote:
| It reminds me of the Tao Te Ching of Laozi... and Jesus'
| parables in the New Testament.
|
| So maybe your idea has a future...
| prmoustache wrote:
| Don't we already have linkedin for those condensed ideas?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| You'll get a 60 pages book, not a 1000 pages one.
| bluechar wrote:
| That's what "The Personal MBA" book did
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| Amazon tried to disrupt this with their Kindle Singles
| program with books in the 75-100 page range. It is still
| technically around but consumers clearly voted against it.
|
| Despite constant complaints about the padding in many non-
| fiction books (not just business) there's clearly a silent
| majority who feel like "If I'm going to bother, ugh, opening
| a book then I want it to be as thick as possible".
|
| For that matter, you see a similar dynamic on the fiction
| side too with novellas and short stories bring far distant in
| popularity to novels. (Even though those same people have
| zero issues watching 22 minute TV episodes.)
| graemep wrote:
| There are some very nice short print books suchas OUP's
| "Very short introduction to...". Penguin (?) used to do
| single short stories and extracts of biographies etc. many
| years ago. I do not think they do any more, but I have
| some.
|
| Then there was the delightful Bluffer's Guides series.
|
| I like shorter novels and short stories myself, especially
| in SF where ideas matter.
| bee_rider wrote:
| 2 is a good point, but I wonder if it would be best to just
| drop the pretexts and explicitly describe these stories as
| Aesop style fables.
| pessimizer wrote:
| 3. The idea is trite, and the fluff is there to fool people
| into thinking it is substantial (i.e. it's not fluff, it's ad
| copy.)
| ghaff wrote:
| It's the way the publishing industry works. There may be an
| article or possibly two or three articles with case studies,
| etc. but a published book needs to be 250 pages or so.
|
| I really felt like I was fluffing up a book when I went through
| a publisher. For the second edition I felt it was a bit better
| as I trimmed some stuff and added a dedicated chapter with a
| legal co-worker. But it's downside to working through a
| publisher. Probably won't do it again and have self-published
| other shorter works.
| bdangubic wrote:
| "7 habits..." made an empire from 7 common-sense things in a
| book form :)
| monkeyelite wrote:
| I actually think that's one of the better ones - not in terms
| of business, but personal/family organization. Have you read
| it? Spoilers: it's not a list of 7 tricks to put in your
| daily schedule.
| bdangubic wrote:
| ugh it was mandatory read at a place I did my internship
| looooong time ago :) read the 8th habit out of curiosity
| what can that be that deserves an entire book by itself
| codeproject wrote:
| The writer's children actually inherited his empire and even
| wrote a book called Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens. I
| always wondered--if the original book was so powerful and
| effective, wouldn't the greatest beneficiaries be his own
| kids? With their father's guidance and the principles from
| the book, they should have achieved remarkable success. After
| all, you can't find a better coach than that, and it's hard
| to beat such a winning combination. Yet, the result is that
| his child ended up making a living by writing a book telling
| others how to succeed--rather than demonstrating that success
| firsthand.
| monkeyelite wrote:
| Sean:
|
| > He later earned his MBA from Harvard Business School.
| Covey was the starting quarterback on BYU's football team
| during the 1987 and 1988 seasons, where he led his team to
| two bowl games
|
| > Covey worked at Deloitte and Touche consulting in Boston,
| followed by Trammel Crow Ventures in Dallas.
|
| Stephen junior:
|
| > He received an MBA from Harvard Business School
|
| > He is the father of NFL wide receiver and return
| specialist Britain Covey.
| rolfkip wrote:
| 7 Habits is a self-help/business-focused reconstruction of
| Covey's more theologically-founded book Spiritual Roots of
| Human Relations. If you want Covey's foundational thoughts on
| the subjects in 7 Habits, that will be the more informative
| read.
| WheelsAtLarge wrote:
| I agree they are common-sense, even the author said so, but
| the problem is that people don't come up with the habits
| until after they need them. If you know the habits and put
| them into practice early on, they make a difference. But like
| anything, they only work if they are put into use. I suspect
| that the best way to use them is to write them on a card and
| review them often - no book needed.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| Sometimes that is true, yes. It's also true that
| programmers/engineers often don't do nuance outside their
| field. A extremely bright classmate who was an engineer swore
| it was a waste of time to read anything other than the
| headlines in newspapers. The actual article was unnecessary
| repetitive fluff.
|
| What is seen as window dressing, is often essential tapestry
| that provides context.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Less true nowadays since the headlines are made for attention
| grabbing and bear no relationship with the content.
| tomrod wrote:
| How to win friends and influence people remains one of the
| better ones. Most of its chapters are only a handful of pages.
| hammock wrote:
| That is not a business book
| ListeningPie wrote:
| What is a business book? For example I've seen "The Art of
| War" listed as business book.
| levocardia wrote:
| Yes it is, almost all of the examples in the book are about
| business situations!
| WheelsAtLarge wrote:
| That's the rule for writing books. I don't know about now, but
| it used to be that "Learn to" computer books were 1000+ pages.
| A group of programmers would get together and write mostly
| useless chapters each and put them all into one book. The book
| became a best seller simply because buyers thought they were
| getting a bargain.
|
| It's the same for business books. A 30-page book won't sell,
| but a 250 one is a best seller.
| begueradj wrote:
| You often need to explain the same idea from different
| perspectives because you don't know your audience.
| NeutralCrane wrote:
| This is my issue as well, not just with business books, but
| self-help in general. Many have a premise that might be helpful
| or at least interesting. But almost none of them require more
| than a blog post to fully explore. The expansion to a full book
| length is almost never worth it and is solely for the author to
| monetize the idea.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| The entire broad genre of self-help + business has a
| reputation for being scam-adjacent for a reason. It's pretty
| much all junk. Even the ones people say are "good" (people
| keep writing them because they _can_ sell, which means some
| become popular, which are the "good" ones, but usually they
| aren't good)
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Some of them do have a page worth of valuable content; some
| have a page worth of misleading content that is worse than
| nothing; and most don't have any content.
|
| The first set is supposed to be the "good" ones, but a lot
| of people will add books from the second set there too.
| dmos62 wrote:
| You need time/repetition for new information to sync in. The
| time needed is inversely proportional to how familiar you are
| with the subject. For example, I just said what I wanted to
| say, but now I'll repeat it in another way, because that will
| make it more accessible: if I already know imperative
| programming and some logic (?), my absorption of a new related
| subject - logic programming will be faster; if the most related
| thing I know is setting the alarm clock on my bedside, the
| absorption rate will be low and I'll need a lot of learning
| material for it to sink in.
| levocardia wrote:
| I'm more empathetic to the "stretch out the simple idea"
| approach since I realized that there's basically no way to
| monetize or productize a concise but useful idea. If I read a
| really great tweet about doing creative work, I'd probably
| forget it in a day or two. But if I have a friend who's
| struggling with creative work, I can just give him a copy of
| The War of Art and there's a much higher chance it will "catch"
| (and Pressfield pockets a few well-earned dollars too). And for
| what it's worth, The War of Art does very little stretching.
| mmoskal wrote:
| My understanding is that printing 300 page paperback costs like
| $2 while 50 pages cost $1.50. However you can clearly claim way
| more money for the 300 pages so publishers are not interested
| in short books, business or otherwise.
| motoxpro wrote:
| Doesn't that describe most good ideas in life? Things that are
| commonsense (especially after the fact), simple, seldomly well
| practiced because of human nature, and can be communicated in a
| few paragraphs but take years to understand?
|
| Kindness, democracy, business, performance in sport, scientific
| method etc.
|
| I don't know one good idea that can't be communicated in a page
| or less.
| fifilura wrote:
| Why do you think it is not possible?
|
| Of course it is hard work to distill something complex, but I
| have some naive intuition that it would actually be possible.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| I think you misunderstood the comment.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| "It works" is a rare example where the author deliberately kept
| the book short. I don't recall how many pages it is but you can
| read whole thing in only 10 min or so.
| serial_dev wrote:
| While I agree that many of these books are inflated from 5
| pages to 250 on purpose so that they can sell a book, it is
| sometimes useful to hear an idea multiple times, with examples
| and explanations as to why that idea is important. I'm not sure
| all those details can be included in a 5 paragraph ChatGPT
| summary.
|
| I find it extremely annoying in books, but I don't mind it at
| all with audiobooks, it drives the point home and makes you
| think about the idea and how you could apply it in your own
| life while you are going for a walk or doing the dishes.
| raincole wrote:
| Business books (and self-help books) had been ChatGPTing before
| ChatGPT was invented.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| Its because lots of non-fiction books start as articles, talks,
| essays, papers or blogs. Ideas that could be expressed in
| twenty pages or an hour talk get elaborated into books because
| books are the medium that sells. In the old days people wrote
| and sold pamphlets!
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| I was hoping that ebooks, print on demand, self-publishing
| and such would lead to a new age of pamphleteering. But it
| didn't happen like that.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Because nobody bought the one page for $29.95 at the airport in
| days people still bought paper books.
| Alex_001 wrote:
| Very true. It's almost as if most business books follow an
| internal formula:
|
| 1. Introduce an insight
|
| 2. Tell a story that illustrates it
|
| 3. Repeat 8-10 times with mild variations
|
| I sometimes wonder if the length is partly marketing--thicker
| books feel more valuable on a shelf, and more "serious" for
| gifting or team reading.
|
| That said, I think what readers actually need is often not more
| explanation, but implementation structure. A single page of
| actionable scaffolding might be more impactful than 200 pages
| of polished narrative.
| marsten wrote:
| Length is 100% marketing. There is no commercial market for
| 15-20 page essays, which would be the ideal length for a lot
| of business books. (The famous Harvard Business Review cases
| are typically this long.)
|
| The reason many business books feel fluffy is that these
| 15-20 pages of solid content are spread over 300 pages to
| meet the expectations of readers and booksellers.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| You forgot the first 2 chapters whose purpose is to lay out
| with anecdotes how everybody does it wrong because they don't
| follow that one insight and argue that anyone who criticizes
| the book has the wrong mindset for being a successful
| entrepreneur.
| abanana wrote:
| The same formula seems to be common to all the "popular X"
| genres (science, psychology, etc), and has been for years.
| The Selfish Gene followed it. So do Malcolm Gladwell's books
| - the last one of his I read, I had to restrain myself from
| throwing at the nearest wall in frustration at his nonsense.
| koliber wrote:
| Would you believe me and would you immediately start following
| the advice if I told you that the key to a healthy life is
| "Surround yourself with meaningful relationships, sleep well,
| eat well, exercise, don't drink alcohol, and don't smoke"?
|
| I don't know you but there's a good chance that you're not
| doing all of those things. There's also a good chance that you
| will agree with the above advice. There's a small chance that
| simply hearing those condensed words will change your behavior.
|
| To change how we think and act we need good stories. This is
| what books are, including these business books. Good stories
| that take a simple idea and wrap it in anecdotes,
| justification, shock value, and entertainment so that they
| stick in your head and perhaps convince you to act in a certain
| way, at least sometimes.
| foobahhhhh wrote:
| Stories sure ... and I need to know how to do each of those
| things! Where "I" is a million people with different
| knowledge and backgrounds and health conditions and ages
| converging to the book.
| eadmund wrote:
| > Would you believe me and would you immediately start
| following the advice if I told you that the key to a healthy
| life is "Surround yourself with meaningful relationships,
| sleep well, eat well, exercise, don't drink alcohol, and
| don't smoke"?
|
| > There's also a good chance that you will agree with the
| above advice.
|
| I just want to note that I do _not_ agree with the above
| advice. Tobacco and alcohol _in moderation_ are key parts of
| a healthy life. Abstention is neurotic and thus unhealthy.
| sgarland wrote:
| You are the first person I have ever seen argue that
| tobacco in moderation is healthy. Quite the claim.
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| I have a friend who has claimed, on multiple occasions,
| that soda pop protects your teeth because the acid kills
| the bacteria.
|
| So, you know, these ideas are out there.
| koliber wrote:
| Your opinion that tobacco and alcohol in moderation are key
| parts of a healthy life is in the minority.
|
| There was some evidence that pointed to some benefits to
| occasional minimal alcohol consumption, but in more recent
| years, the scientific opinion is that there are no safe
| amounts of alcohol consumption.
|
| Alcohol has a side benefit that it generally encourages
| socializing, and being among people DOES have big health
| benefits. However, if you can have meaningful relationships
| and socialize WITHOUT consuming alcohol, that is even
| better.
|
| I'm willing to bet that me stating that did not convince
| you in the slightest. However, if you read a book or two,
| were presented with evidence, written in more elegant
| prose, there is a bigger chance that you might be willing
| to start believing it.
|
| Just stating things does very little, and that is why books
| are valuable.
| kristofferR wrote:
| It's easy to summarize business books, even ChatGPT can
| probably summarize all the major ones just from its internal
| knowledge, but you'll likely not internalize any of the
| knowledge if you don't read the whole thing. The narrative
| might not matter that much by itself, but they'll make you
| remember the main points of a book.
|
| I tried Blinkist (audio book summary service), but after
| listening to 20 summaries, I think I would have learnt more by
| just reading 1 book in full.
| bsder wrote:
| And are often complete fiction. See: In Search of Excellence
| 8note wrote:
| i think of books like
|
| * the secret life of groceries * omnivore's dillema * toy story *
| the box
|
| as business books. they have a bunch of case studies and union
| politics and a general idea theyre trying to convey.
|
| without industry experience, i wouldnt conceive that there's an
| occupation of "buyer" or what it is they do, without having read
| those books.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Most popular nonfiction is entertainment. When I realized this I
| went back to reading fiction. The quality of entertainment is so
| much better!
| garrickvanburen wrote:
| I'm always hesitant to drag books written in a different era
| through today's sensibilities.
|
| For all the complaints of these books today (and I've complained
| about Lean Startup as recently as Dec 2024) these were written in
| a different time and likely written about tactics obsolete at the
| time of publication.
|
| Let's allow them to be artifacts of their time.
| motoxpro wrote:
| I have the complete opposite take to the person who wrote this
| article.
|
| Most business books are collections of experiences with the
| takeaways that a person had based on those experiences, whether
| strategy, market dynamics of the time, unique insight, etc.
|
| It's the readers job to understand and apply what is applicable
| to their situation. To say the study of past history is unless
| because businesses are no longer doing great is crazy. That would
| be like an athlete saying Tiger Woods' golf swing advice is no
| longer relevant because he was only good in hindsight, and he
| can't do it anymore.
|
| Every single "counterexample" in this article is just hindsight,
| which, ironically, is the article's argument for why business
| books are useless. They just wrote their own survivorship-biased
| article version of one.
|
| It's only now that we realize that AirBnb would cannibalize the
| hotel business. If people had known that before, they wouldn't
| have had trouble raising money. Replacing a Ritz Carlton AND a
| Holiday Inn with a random person's home was so far from obvious.
|
| It's only now that we realize that Stripe was focused on years of
| operational excellence and not a gimmick of "take payments with 7
| lines of code." Replace it with AI and you have a tangential
| version of the tagline on every SaaS company's homepage today.
|
| It's only now that Apple has the product experience to not build
| MVPs where, before, they were about to go bankrupt doing the same
| thing.
|
| The "mistakes" the person made were all covered in the books they
| read. And all of the things they say they wanted are tactical
| (LTV:CAC, Incentive Design, Churn, etc.), which makes sense as
| they are a quant.
|
| I would have more respect if people who bash business books could
| have called all of the "counterexamples" this person gave (which
| would mean they would be billionaires) or could call the current
| day examples that will not be true in 15 years by putting their
| money behind them OR their businesses go on to be successful (by
| whatever metric you want) for the next 20 years.
|
| It's just not that easy, there are no silver bullets, but it's
| useful to study what has already been done.
| ghaff wrote:
| The problem I have with this book could be a short article is
| that the actual stories are often useful. I don't disagree in
| general that a lot of these books could be 100 pages rather
| than 300 pages but I'm also not sure they could be magazine
| articles even if their core content could probably fit in that
| space.
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| Spicy take: read the narrative non-fiction business books. They
| are written for entertainment and sit in the business section but
| you can learn things.
|
| barbarians at the gate
|
| when genius failed
|
| bad blood
|
| billion dollar whale
|
| chaos monkey
|
| liars poker
|
| shoe dog
|
| american kingping
|
| broken code
|
| soul of a new machine
|
| and so on. There is nothing wrong with entertainment and since
| these are usually written by journalists or professional writers,
| the writing is often better.
| milkshakes wrote:
| don't forget the smartest guys in the room
| sam1r wrote:
| Thank you so much for this list composition.
| wilkystyle wrote:
| Bethany McLean is great. I also enjoyed "All The Devils Are
| Here"
| JSR_FDED wrote:
| Agree. This is a great list. I've read 7 of them and frequently
| remember actionable anecdotes, whereas I hardly remember the
| key point from "serious" business books.
| 9dev wrote:
| And that makes perfect sense. There's a reason why we tell
| children social norms via fairy tales and monster stories;
| humans are very susceptible to a good tale, those tend to
| stick in your brain like little else.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| Great list! If you are interested in complicated deals I
| strongly recommend Eccentric Orbits, about the Iridium
| satellite network. Its a real page turner. Also perhaps House
| of Krupp, though that one is a bit dark.
| thosch0 wrote:
| I'd like to add Never Lost Again, which is the story of the
| team that eventually built Google Maps
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| I picked up Barbarians at the Gate the other year, but put it
| down when I realized all it was doing was making me fantasize
| about all the useless toys I could buy myself if I was really
| rich. A good book to read if you want to dream about being an
| avaricious plutocrat.
|
| Personally I'd like to see more rich people follow the Bill
| Gates model of giving almost all of it away.
| SonOfLilit wrote:
| Interesting, I can't recall any specific expensive toy except
| that the RKR guy's wife liked expensive interior design, and
| my main takeaway from it was "accountants can make
| unimaginable amounts of money, both by creating value and
| destroying it, pay attention to the accounting perspective".
| nathan_compton wrote:
| This is a personal thing and probably not good, but I just hate
| narratives. Like stories are so contingent and our
| interpretation of our lives so irrational that I have almost no
| interest in the peculiar sequence of events that constitute
| people's lives. I especially dislike them when someone has
| curated them into a book, because that process is also often
| disingenuous, self-laudatory, irrational, or pulled around by
| other incentives.
|
| I love people, I just don't care that much about how they think
| they got where they are.
|
| There is a spicy quote which I resonate with. Something to the
| effect of tiny minds think about people, bigger minds think
| about events and galaxy brains think about ideas. When I read,
| I just really want to get to the ideas. I could not give two
| shits about people and I barely care about the events.
| jeremyscanvic wrote:
| I sympathize with your view and I dislike it as much as the
| next guy when people prove dubious points from poorly
| convincing stories, but here's how I view things: badly told
| stories are frustrating, and it is difficult to tell stories
| well.
|
| The thing with (real) stories is they relate facts in a
| structured and somewhat neutral way (causality). This allows
| you, the reader, to learn things that are beyond the author's
| point. Essays, on the other hand, don't allow that as authors
| can (should) always leave out everything that does not
| support their point without compromising the text.
| morsecodist wrote:
| I totally agree with the sentiment. I am pretty skeptical of this
| sort of broad advice. People who achieve success did so under
| specific conditions. It is unclear which aspects of their
| strategy are universal and which were only effective under their
| conditions. Advice based on a broader survey of examples may be a
| bit better but we need to be honest about how hard it is to
| extract meaningful insights from this sort of thing. Even
| something like the time period you picked your examples from has
| huge implications for what you are studying.
| unmole wrote:
| I'd extend it to business _news_.
| MantisShrimp90 wrote:
| Thank you, most of these books are actively harmful, and the lack
| of intellectual rigor makes them exactly this, entertainment
| masquerading as education.
|
| What matters is humility, thoughtfulness, and a relentless focus
| on quality. These books sell to people that want all of the
| inspiration with none of the work.
| deepsquirrelnet wrote:
| Having come up through hard sciences, I don't ever know what to
| do with these kinds of books. If they were written as memoirs,
| then that's a different story. That's all they usually are, but
| they're presented in more of an educational/instructional
| context, yet are devoid of rigor.
|
| I've had 'Running Things' on my shelf for quite a while, but just
| don't feel compelled to read it. To me it's just a weird genre.
| Slightly dishonest or something.
| drob518 wrote:
| A better title to this would have been "MOST Business Books are
| Entertainment, Not Strategic Tools."
|
| Certainly, there are the fad books that are useless, but some are
| quite good and useful. In addition to Good to Great, I'd also
| include Crossing the Chasm, the Innovator's Dilemma, Positioning,
| and The Culting of Brands.
|
| The fact that the author recommends four books at the end shows
| he really doesn't believe his own title.
| thecaio wrote:
| I get it and don't disagree but isn't this being too literal?
| At the limit, isn't this expecting author to be overly precious
| with the title? I mean, I could as well ask author to state a
| precise statistic like "93.76% of business books are
| entertainment"
| Lienetic wrote:
| Can anyone share some examples they think are strategic tools?
| I've read a solid number of these and am genuinely interested.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Some of the business books that I always keep within easy reach
| of my desk:
|
| - High output management
|
| - The hard thing about hard things
|
| - The Great CEO Within
|
| - Who - a method for hiring
|
| (I've also bought and given away multiple copies of each of these
| books.)
| timewizard wrote:
| Nuh uh. I got Gary V's new book, Day Trading Attention: How to
| Actually Build Brand and Sales in the New Social Media World, on
| my shelf and it is my new bible! The secret has been unlocked and
| given to me. For just $19.99. Why can't you believe it?! Why
| can't you just be _happy_ for me, for once?!
| WoodenChair wrote:
| I've read over 100 business books. Why? Because I enjoy the genre
| and its many sub-genres. From both an entertainment and a
| practical perspective. And that's also why I co-host the podcast
| Business Books & Co. [0].
|
| In my opinion, the author of this post is correct about his
| criticisms of the specific books in the post (we did several of
| them on the show). Many business books overly generalize, are not
| empirically rigorous, and are better seen as anecdotal and/or
| entertainment.
|
| But you also need to understand that "business books" is a very
| broad category that includes many sub-genres like entrepreneurial
| storytelling (Shoe Dog), "big idea" books (Zero to One), career
| up-skilling (Radical Candor), economic history (Titan), and self-
| help (How to Win Friends and Influence People). Many of these
| cross over into non-business genres as well.
|
| So, in some sense the author here is doing the same kind of over-
| generalization that many of the books do. He's mostly speaking
| about the "big idea" books as if those are the whole genre. What
| is a business book? It's ill-defined but I think there are many
| great ones outside the "big idea" space. For example, we just
| interviewed John Romero on the show to discuss his 2023
| autobiography Doom Guy[1]. In my opinion, it is absolutely a
| wonderful business book from the entrepreneurial storytelling
| sub-genre. But it doesn't fit the mold that this post talks
| about.
|
| 0: http://businessbooksandco.com
|
| 1: https://pnc.st/s/business-books/e9076f47/doom-guy-with-
| john-...
| baxtr wrote:
| Yes agree! They are really bad, superficial, one-idea-books.
| These are those the author highlights.
|
| He himself gives a list of good books to read at the end of the
| article. So I think the title is a nice click bait.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| I enjoy "business fables" like The Goal or The Phoenix Project.
| Since you must know a fair chunk of the business books - any
| other good ones in this genre?
| ghaff wrote:
| DevOps is one of the weird ones because the details are so
| situational. No one likes to emphatically throw
| communications between Dev and Ops (and security) under the
| train. But the reality is that, for large organizations,
| making it so that different functions don't _have_ to
| communicate is often the best approach.
| sgarland wrote:
| I have yet to see DevOps actually executed well. IME, it
| always winds up with half-assed infrastructure, because
| devs often have little interest in ops, and even more
| rarely have any kind of background in it.
|
| The entire concept seems to me like devs noticed that ops
| folks were often automating large portions of their jobs
| with shell scripts, and haughtily thought, "we could do so
| much better with proper tooling and a better language,"
| completely disregarding the fact that the ops team had
| decades of combined experience and trauma from past
| incidents.
| ghaff wrote:
| Don't really disagree.
|
| I sort of lost interest in a lot of the DevOps culture.
|
| I think when Kubernetes came in for larger orgs (and even
| before such as OpenShift that I was involved with), the
| set infra up and get out of the way mindset made a lot of
| sense. I think there was an attempt to overlay DevOps on
| what would become Platform Engineering but I'm not sure
| it ever really made sense.
| WoodenChair wrote:
| I think you're referring to novels that have strong business
| themes? Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding. That's an
| interesting sub-genre that we have not yet explored on the
| show but have discussed doing in the future. In the six years
| of the show, we have done exclusively non-fiction and I read
| myself mostly non-fiction. Sorry, therefore no
| recommendations yet! I'll checkout the ones you mentioned.
| draazon wrote:
| If you're that keen on business books, I have one that you
| might enjoy: https://www.sallery.co.uk/lessons. I've tried to
| avoid some of the pitfalls listed in the article, but feedback
| from someone with broad knowledge of the genre would be most
| welcome!
| apexalpha wrote:
| These blogs and these kind of comments are why I keep coming
| back to this site.
|
| Thanks!
| mettamage wrote:
| So WoodenChair (fun username!), from your perspective, what
| books would you recommend that actually has some value in
| business?
| azeirah wrote:
| My personal recommendation is and remains "E-Myth".
| WoodenChair wrote:
| "Business" is so broad it's hard to give you recommendations
| without knowing what you're looking for. That's kind of the
| point of my post. But as one example, as I mentioned in my
| post, I loved Doom Guy. If you're building a business in the
| video game industry you should definitely check it out.
|
| I would also recommend all of the other books in my post that
| I mentioned by different sub-genres (Shoe Dog, Radical
| Candor, etc.).
| jll29 wrote:
| > So, in some sense the author here is doing the same kind of
| over-generalization that many of the books do.
|
| I read most of the main books in the
| "ideation/innovation/startup/scale-up/
| entrepreneurship/business plan writing" available at a certain
| time, and had to sift through a lot of useless or redundant
| material to extract very little wisdom from it. (Of course what
| is really useful emerges only when you then execute your own
| start-up idea later.)
|
| The grandparent post cautions from "overgeneralization", so let
| me add a comment in the opposite direction, namely
| "undergeneralization": it is not only business books that are
| more for entertainment (and perhaps reflection) than hard
| facts; even the category of formal economics/business studies
| academic literature includes large quantities of claims that do
| not hold, were not properly assessed, hold no predictive power
| etc.
|
| I recommend one that positively stands out, Philip E. Tetlock
| and his studies on forecasting abilities of so-called "experts"
| versus average person in the street: he wrote several critical
| studies that found academics (economists/business in
| particular, hence relevant for this post) and other experts to
| be lacking, and then developed a methodology for more
| systematic prediction (e.g. see the book Superforecasting: The
| Science of Prediction (2016, with Ben Gardner,
| https://www.amazon.com/Superforecasting-Science-
| Prediction-P...).
| delian66 wrote:
| What did he predict?
| bko wrote:
| I'm skeptical of overly empirical arguments. It's a lot easier
| to fool someone by citing some unreproducible study or
| misinterpreted statistic. Tell me a story and I understand it's
| one story but it might have some kind of meaning or resonance.
|
| The best thing I learn from business book and bios is that it
| can be done. The people are often very human and flawed. Half
| of it is just believing you can do it and working hard.
|
| If you look at empirical data you quickly come across efficient
| market and no free lunch. But it's important to note you are
| not a statistic and what you do determines your fate. Or at
| least that's the most productive way to go through life
| kmacdough wrote:
| This kind of underscores the author's point, though. These
| books in question give the impression that they supply
| concrete business advice, but much of it is highly non-
| transferrable. Or at least requires significant discipline to
| separate the concrete from the self-aggrandization, survivor
| bias, confirmation bias, etc. They don't get at the heart of
| the technical, social and political challenges facing an
| average Joe starting a company. Sure, their journey may
| inspire you to get moving, but so could Frodos. This doesn't
| make them a bad book, but they are not scholarly.
| Realistically, since Frodos story based on a much broader
| familiarity with human history, it may be significantly more
| cross-applicable despite being set in fantasy world.
| ghaff wrote:
| My comment was probably something similar. Are there some
| general principles? Sure. And I'm glad that Harvard
| Business School professors, consultants, and successful
| execs (or their ghostwriters) can elaborate on them as food
| for thought especially when backed with some data. But I've
| also heard/read seemingly super-logical cases for various
| outcomes that ended up simply not happening.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Quite a few pop-non-fic books, especially business, self-help
| (tons of overlap in form and technique there), and both
| business and non-business (these latter usually get adopted
| by the business-side anyway) "big idea" books, not only cite
| studies of dubious value, but cite sources that don't include
| their claim at all, or contradict it.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| Even the reputable books tend to resort to anecdotal evidence
| and do not evaluate any of their claims. I'd go crazy if I had
| to read 100 of them but the ones I read were based on 100%
| survivorship bias and 0% scientific studies.
|
| Personally, it seems to me that general business books --- that
| is, the ones that aren't textbooks (accounting, microeconomics,
| etc.) --- are merely a sub-genre of the self-help category and
| that these books may provide value by giving some motivation
| and inspiration at best and, at worst, provide huge disvalue by
| misinforming.
| michaelt wrote:
| Content like this has to choose the point they're targeting on
| a rigorous-education-to-entertaining spectrum.
|
| Chess teaching content that's only for people at ~2300 ELO on
| how to get from there to 2400 ELO? Potential audience of
| perhaps 10,000 people worldwide.
|
| Chess-themed entertainment content, with educational content
| mixed with lots of jokes and memes, accessible to players at
| all levels? Potential audience of 10,000,000 people.
|
| Likewise, you don't become a bestselling business author if
| your book on how to be a Fortune 500 CEO only has an audience
| of 500 people. If your book succeeds, 99.95% of your sales will
| come from people who don't ever plan or expect to become a
| Fortune 500 CEO.
| watwut wrote:
| One difference is that the chess content you talk about does
| have educational value - it will make you better chess player
| although in time ineffective way.
| WoodenChair wrote:
| It's interesting you use that analogy because my dad was an
| author of chess books. Yes, many were a niche within a niche
| and only sold a few thousands copies.
|
| My observations about business books match your intuition--
| the more popular business books tend to be popular for
| reasons beyond their educational content. They usually
| include great storytelling, are meticulously crafted and
| edited, and are about societally interesting subject matter
| beyond the pure educational aspects.
|
| But that really makes a difference in your experience as a
| reader. I'm not saying popular means good. I am saying that
| on average with all things considered the popular business
| books tend to be better experiences to read than the
| unpopular ones. Of course there are exceptions.
| ikt wrote:
| just quickly your website doesn't have https so it says that
| the site I'm going is insecure:
|
| > Secure Site Not Available
|
| > You've enabled HTTPS-Only Mode for enhanced security, and a
| HTTPS version of businessbooksandco.com is not available.
|
| I was legit taken back for a second wondering what I just
| clicked on
|
| But cheers, I just realised how far we've come if yours was the
| first site in years? that I've seen this on
| WoodenChair wrote:
| You're right. I know! It's our podcast host, Pinecast. They
| don't provide HTTPS to customers for the website. Luckily
| very few people find us through the website. The vast
| majority are followers on Spotify. Thanks for the feedback.
| timoth3y wrote:
| There is also a strong signaling effect.
|
| For better or worse, which books people are reading (or say they
| are reading) is often used to determine which "camp" they belong
| to. People who took the time to read Musk's biography are viewed
| slightly differently than those who chose not to.
|
| IRL, discussions of the contents and ideas tend to be
| superficial.
|
| When I'm asked what books I'm reading, I always answer honestly,
| but rarely mention a title that's been published in the last 30
| years or so. For some reason, people seem to be more comfortable
| deeply discussing older works.
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| Most books published aren't worth the readers time. After 30
| years, there's been some distillation, and the ones still in
| popular culture are higher quality.
|
| You have deeper discussions about older books because the
| median surviving older book is more worthy of discussion than
| the median new book.
| WheelsAtLarge wrote:
| Most books are read for entertainment. I've known many people who
| have read tons of books but couldn't remember most of what
| they've read. Every once in a while, a book sparks some interest
| but most will be read for entertainment.
|
| I used to think that a well-read individual was a well informed
| and smart. No, they just read books for entertainment. It's not a
| bad thing but let's be clear about that. It's just entertainment.
| s0rr0wskill wrote:
| this is me with media in general i cant remember much of
| anything i consume
| nazgul17 wrote:
| True, but books are also valuable for the subtle ways in which
| they change you, not just for what you remember.
| WheelsAtLarge wrote:
| You can say the same about movies and documentaries. Why is a
| book any different?
|
| Yes, books have the power to change you but like anything you
| have to put in the time to study it and put it into practice.
| Reading a ton of them and hoping they will change you by
| osmosis does nothing more than keep your mind busy.
| f4 wrote:
| I agree with you, however, there is a difference between being
| well-ready and widely-read. I think one who can recite the
| essence of a handful of books has more much to say than someone
| who can list 50 books they read last year.
| maerch wrote:
| Reading a lot isn't just about storing and recalling
| information--it's also about shaping the way you think.
|
| The same goes for education. If I measured the value of my
| university years solely by the information I can still recall,
| I'd consider them rather inefficient. But the real value lay in
| learning how to learn and how to think through complex
| problems.
| s0rr0wskill wrote:
| action > over everything
|
| you can read a million business books and know less compared to
| if you just did the thing you were reading about even if you
| failed
| PeeMcGee wrote:
| The mere concept of a "business book" seems like hamfisted
| satire. It blows my mind how so many white collar workers
| genuinely entertain the concept in the first place.
| iamsanteri wrote:
| This is very similar to the "boundary condition" for the
| scientific method and the craziness of "teaching business" in
| schools. I wrote my thoughts too about this at some point:
| https://sentience.lostbookofsales.com/essays/scientific-meth...
| breppp wrote:
| > Skips the part that Peter Thiel was already in the top 1% of
| the population--Stanford-educated, ex-Credit Suisse, and founder
| of a small capital firm--before PayPal. He wasn't a struggling
| outsider with nothing to lose. His advice is filtered through a
| lens of early privilege and structural advantage.
|
| > The book wraps fatalism in edgy language and markets it as
| practical wisdom
|
| First the author embraces fatalism, then criticizes fatalism. I
| guess only one kind is fashionable
| monkeyelite wrote:
| And nowhere does zero to one claim to be a book for the every-
| man. If you're serious about start ups you probably have job
| and educational options.
|
| In fact, the book talks about Theil's experience of almost
| becoming a Supreme Court clerk.
|
| This article is more reductive and off the mark than the
| content it wants to criticize.
| ZeroTalent wrote:
| True. He didn't get everything right, but at least it's not
| 300 pages long ;)
| monkeyelite wrote:
| Any essay from that book is more concise and more
| insightful than this substack. The only reason people are
| commenting is to share their dislike of some business book
| they read - that's why nobody is quoting the actual
| article.
| jgm22 wrote:
| I've read at-least 4-6 books related to startups, business, habit
| building etc.. Majority of them could be a blog or few blogs.
| Sometime I skim through most of the pages to avoid the repetition
| of the concepts.
| anself wrote:
| Agree - but The Goal (Eliyahu Goldratt) is a rare exception to
| this. It's written as a novel but actually contains valuable and
| counterintuitive lessons about optimizing for efficiency in a
| complex delivery process. Worth every page
| rednafi wrote:
| One thing that's common in most business and productivity books
| is that they use an awful lot of words to say things that either
| don't mean much or aren't really replicable. Ton of nonfiction
| books suffer from the same issue and could easily just be a blog
| post.
|
| I still read them now and then because I figure it's better to
| read Mark Manson than scroll through TikTok or get sucked into
| some other Gen Z brainrot.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > Airbnb didn't invent a new concept--it executed better within
| an existing space.
|
| Uhm did it not? If anything it invented _two_ new concepts - paid
| couch surfing (which it turns out people didn 't really want) and
| unofficial ad-hoc holiday rentals (which people really want).
|
| I'm nitpicking - overall the article is spot on and I'm glad this
| is getting called out.
| Wilder7977 wrote:
| Are those new "concepts"? Uber for your house seems all.
| Effectively every single business in the gig economy has been
| rehashing the same concept trying to commodify every aspect of
| the human experience by inserting a platform as an alternative
| to a regulated market (or no market at all).
| ElFitz wrote:
| There's one business book I've actually enjoyed reading and
| somehow learned more from years after reading it than while
| reading it: Business Adventures.
|
| It's a bit silly, doesn't pretend to be a guide, provide any wise
| advice of any sort, and certainly not to have the one grandiose
| radical new idea that will solve all your problems(tm).
|
| But perhaps that's why it works so well.
| jaytyagi wrote:
| Not to mention that the article is written using ChatGPT with
| run-of-the-mill (although still valid) critique of the works
| cited.
| helloplanets wrote:
| Yep. This article reads exactly like one shotting ChatGPT. The
| bullet points are a dead giveaway.
|
| https://chatgpt.com/share/681f1529-2f48-800e-9325-e1adee7521...
| hedayet wrote:
| I agree with the principle. Most books in the case study section
| fall into what I'd call the "self-help-business" category.
| They're comforting reads, especially when work isn't going well.
| You don't necessarily turn to them for strategy, but for a boost
| of optimism or a mental reset, with a dash of hope.
|
| For strategy and execution, I look to Harvard Business Review.
| Its detailed case studies, frameworks, and exercises address the
| operational complexities that don't translate well to mass-market
| books, which often skip them. They're dry and time-intensive, but
| invaluable when you're looking to build real strategic and
| operational skills.
| titaphraz wrote:
| The main theme is survivorship bias: https://xkcd.com/1827/
|
| There's nothing wrong with telling your story in a book. But
| telling it as a half truth is just as bad a lying.
| koliber wrote:
| I believe that almost every single thing you read has some
| worthwhile knowledge or wisdom, as well as a slew of material
| that is wrong or irrelevant or based on values that I don't
| carry. This includes books, blog posts, and sometimes even short
| form social media posts.
|
| The key is to read with an open mind BUT don't blindly take
| everything as gospel. Ask yourself "is this surprising?", or "is
| this new?" and filter it through the "does this apply to me now?"
| or "is the person who is saying this worth listening to?".
|
| Throwing out any entire book is shortsighted. Even "bad" books
| have nuggets of wisdom or new ideas or concepts. Not everything
| applies to your situation. Some things might apply now. Some
| things might apply at some point in the future, and having read
| the book you have an arsenal ready to be deployed when the time
| comes. Some things will never apply.
|
| If I read a book and have one new original perspective or "aha"
| moment, it's a net positive.
| Etheryte wrote:
| This is true, nearly every book has at least some useful or
| insightful bits, but our time is limited. If you're reading one
| book that's mostly uninteresting, you're also not reading all
| the other books that you could be reading instead. Now I'm not
| advocating for minmaxing your life down to the point of
| insanity, but I do think it's sensible to try and pick up good
| books over bad books -- whatever that means to you.
| koliber wrote:
| That's an excellent point.
|
| The last part is most important: whatever that means to you.
|
| I've read books that I thought were great at presenting some
| key concept. Other people would disagree. The key thing is
| that different people perceive and absorb information in
| different ways, no one book will appeal to everyone.
| m_a_g wrote:
| Sorry to be blunt, but this is not a good take at all, because
| of one simple fact; time is limited.
|
| What you're saying basically translates to "read everything".
| koliber wrote:
| Time _is_ limited. But I am not saying "read everything."
|
| I'm saying "read".
|
| If they happen to pick the books from that list, they won't
| walk away empty-handed. They will learn something. These
| books happen to be popular, and they are not worthless. They
| are written in an approachable style that might be more
| easily digestible than the other books the author recommends.
| He said that himself -- the books he recommends are not easy
| reading.
|
| If someone decide to not read these books because of this
| article, but does not read others about similar topics
| either, they lose out.
|
| The title says that "business books are entertainment" which
| on the surface makes it seem like the whole category does not
| have value. By extension you can extrapolate that reading
| about business in books is JUST entertainment, hence has no
| merit value.
|
| I'm not familiar with the books the author recommends, but
| they made it to my reading list. I think that I might be less
| entertained by them than the ones he critiques, but I'm sure
| that they contain some good lessons as well.
| paulcole wrote:
| Where did you get "read everything" from?
|
| Isn't it just "read"?
| TZubiri wrote:
| Thoughts on Hormozi's 100m offers?
| sanswork wrote:
| Boring and a slog to read. It was a few years back but I don't
| remember a single interesting take away(I've read hundreds of
| business books and most I can think of one or two good ideas
| from). It made me go from someone that thought he was
| interesting to someone that actively avoids his content.
| tome wrote:
| > Read no business books. Read Sun Tzu and Thucydides. They were
| contemporaries a world apart from one another and 25 centuries
| apart from us, yet no modern quarrel nor accomplishment escapes
| their analysis.
|
| Tim Sweeney
| https://x.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1610103077599674368
|
| Tim Sweeney has just won one of the rounds in his own version of
| the Peloponnesian war. I ended up listening to Kenneth W. Harl's
| "Great Courses" lecture series on The Peloponnesian War and it
| was mind blowing. One of the best lecture series I've ever
| listened to.
| SZJX wrote:
| You can always come up with criticism for anything. Do they
| deliver some interesting ideas (while understandably they might
| oversimplify some other aspects) and are not complete frauds? If
| so there is some value in them.
| nottorp wrote:
| He forgets to mention that most books that promise to improve you
| at "something" could have been a great 2 kilobyte forum post.
|
| The business model is similar to Netflix: take a possibly decent
| idea and expand it to 5 boring seasons.
| kevinh456 wrote:
| How did this ai written crap get so far up on hacker news.
| jjude wrote:
| Having read hundreds of books over 25 years, here's what I think
| about business books:
|
| - To understand some domain you need knowledge + insights +
| discernment. Books give you knowledge. Only when you apply you
| will get discernment. When you apply you will get specific
| questions which then triggers seeking more knowledge.
|
| - Every book is a map. It leaves out a lot so readers can
| understand the domain. If your interest align with that map,
| you'll find the book useful. Otherwise it turns out to be a fluff
|
| - Most books could be a tweet (directive). Once you understand
| something, it could be expressed as a directive. Until then, you
| need stories, explanations, and nuance.
|
| - Jesus' command: love God and love others is a short directive
| of Ten commandments, which in themselves are condensed directives
| of the Bible. When we hear only the directive, we lose the
| context and we misunderstand. That's where stories come into
| play. Tim Ferriss' "4 hour week" makes sense when you read all
| the stories (playbooks, delegations etc). You leave all of that
| out, "4 hour week" is a (misunderstood) crap.
|
| - Don't read recently published books. wait at least until 5
| years. Let it be looked at it from all angles. Then read it.
|
| - If you want to learn emerging topic (like GenAI), don't read
| books. Join communities and learn from them. Like Perplexity
| community for GenAI.
|
| - Read practicing philosophers. When you want to learn swimming,
| learn from swimmers turned coach, not someone who stood by
| poolside and watched 10000 swimmers (like Jim Collins did)
|
| - Read annual letters to shareholders (by Warren Buffett, Jeff
| Bezos, Biglari ...). They have more signal than noise.
|
| I started writing a reply and it became lot bigger than I
| intended. So I blogged here: https://www.jjude.com/read-biz-
| books/
| veunes wrote:
| A book doesn't have to be comprehensive to be useful, but
| knowing when and how to apply its lens is everything
| bdelmas wrote:
| Yep I think people just want the fast track to being rich and
| are not interested into putting the hours and the grind for it.
| There are amazing books out there but they are textbooks. 1000
| pages long on a single subject, and people don't want that. But
| for the most part, that's where the real knowledge is.
|
| They would rather read 10-15 books on marketing rather than
| study and master a single textbook about marketing. Even when
| they don't have to master all of it and that would still give
| them more value and professional knowledge than reading all of
| these other books.
|
| I read my far share of business books and at some points I was
| seeing the edutainment behind it and the lack of value that
| from now on every time I search for a book I start by searching
| in the textbook section on Amazon not the book section.
| memco wrote:
| > There are amazing books out there but they are textbooks.
| 1000 pages long on a single subject, and people don't want
| that.
|
| I would recommend to you, the author of the OP and others in
| this thread read "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil
| Postman. It is old but it has had amazing sticking powe in my
| idea of what is entertainment and what is informational. He
| argues that many things are made to be entertainment (even
| some books that are thousands of pages) and challenges
| readers to consider this when deciding what to invest into.
| We can't all be experts on everything so we make decisions,
| consciously and unconsciously about when and where to draw
| the line based on what information is available, how it's
| presented and how much the value/work tradeoff is to
| study/consume it in that format.
|
| I think the sting comes when we see people ignore low hanging
| fruit especially willfully but we would be less critical of
| someone saying that the task at hand is beyond their current
| capacity that someone else might be better suited to a
| particular task or topic.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| What's a good master-level textbook about marketing?
| rytill wrote:
| Can you list some long textbooks on a single subject that are
| amazing?
| gizzlon wrote:
| > There are amazing books out there but they are textbooks.
| 1000 pages long on a single subject, and people don't want
| that. But for the most part, that's where the real knowledge
| is.
|
| huh, hard disagree on this one. In my experience, there is
| zero correlation between length and insights.
| m_a_g wrote:
| Thanks for the comment. I've read the blog post as well. I
| think what's missing is a list of business books you'd
| recommend. Otherwise, I'm not sure what kind of business books
| you're talking about.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| I think the top book for any one person isn't the top book
| recommended by everyone the most. In my experience I've had
| to wade through 30 books to find my own gem. No aggregate
| data could have led me more directly to that gem. It takes
| real work to hunt for what works best and great satisfaction
| in finding it.
| jjude wrote:
| > isn't the top book recommended by everyone the most
|
| Agreed. everyone's context is different and hence the books
| are different; even the lesson gained for the same book
| will be different.
| jjude wrote:
| - In the blog post I linked to the "best business books" by
| "Personal MBA": https://personalmba.com/best-business-books/
|
| - I talked about 3 letters to shareholders
|
| - And talked about the Bible
|
| - I talked about books by Alan Weiss & Derek Sivers
| kmacdough wrote:
| > Read practicing philosophers. When you want to learn
| swimming, learn from swimmers turned coach, not someone who
| stood by poolside and watched 10000 swimmers (like Jim Collins
| did)
|
| I think "turned coach" is incredibly key here. Being a part, or
| even the head, of a successful business is not sufficient.
|
| It is necessary to test those key insights/theories across the
| widest possible landscape. Across wildly different businesses
| with wildly different models, founders and internal cultures.
| Only then is it possible to meaningfully separate which
| insights are truly general, and which are heavily contingent on
| specifics.
|
| The books the author critiques are primarily self-centered
| stories of success, which don't take sufficient meta-analysis
| of the context. Not that these stories aren't valuable, but
| only with a sufficiently robust knowledge of textbook business
| and economics to take each story sceptically and in context.
|
| Given the consistency with which I've been recommended many of
| these exact books, I consider the Authors criticism necessary
| and well founded, if perhaps a bit narrowly focused.
| mrandish wrote:
| > I think "turned coach" is incredibly key here.
|
| I agree but think "turned coach" is necessary but not
| sufficient. Being a successful practitioner doesn't require
| fully and deeply understanding all the key elements which
| contributed to their success. Many do but certainly not all.
| Even among those able to introspect and analyze, that doesn't
| mean they have the skills to teach it to others which
| requires high-level skills in observation, communication, and
| adapting to the student's context.
|
| So, I think the best case coach is someone who successfully
| and repeatedly did it, who understands the key elements of
| doing it successfully, and has repeatedly taught others to be
| successful. Even determining that is challenging because
| successful practitioners turned coach tend to get the best,
| highest-potential students. In the case of a coach who never
| did it, if they get even one successful enough student, the
| reputation effects can quickly compound into getting their
| pick of the best students.
|
| Further complicating the process of identifying a great coach
| for you is the meta aspect that student success isn't solely
| dependent on the quality of the coach or teacher. Student
| ability, drive and other elements are huge factors. Serially
| successful coaches are probably demonstrating their ability
| to identify those innate traits in student selection as much
| as their teaching ability.
| yial wrote:
| The annual letter to shareholders is such a great signal that
| seems to be missed by a lot of people I encounter in business.
|
| They'll read current popular books. Or even older ones. But
| seem to miss scale / times / people / resources and mis apply.*
| (I agree with your statement about waiting - or if you want to
| read it applying heavy discernment ).
|
| However, they don't seem to have the same interest in reading
| shareholder letters. I'll add that certain annual reports can
| contain really helpful information about economic realities,
| marketing, logistics, etc. (Home Depot's is a surprisingly good
| example - again- if you apply some discernment to what you're
| reading).
|
| *by that I mean if you're an executive at a 15 person company,
| that's experiencing stagnation or slow (3-5% growth) and
| dealing with physical widgets, trying to emulate Twitter,
| Airbnb, or SaaS businesses might not be the right move.
| Funes- wrote:
| Most books are junk entertainment, and not what they're, in fact,
| falsely purported to be. We live in the most insincere period in
| history thanks to the malign coupling of late stage capitalism
| and pervasive interconnectedness (smartphones and social media).
| Everything is simulacra, just an insincere monetization process.
| Sensationalism is our new God.
| gitroom wrote:
| Pretty cool seeing how folks argue over fluff vs depth in
| business books - tbh I struggle finishing most of them for this
| exact reason. you ever hit a book where one small story actually
| sticks with you way longer than all the big frameworks?
| mirkodrummer wrote:
| > These aren't easy reads. > They require real cognitive effort.
| > But they offer lasting value.
|
| Here we go, that's the real problem today, the lack of focus and
| not being able anymore to invest cognitive effort in long lasting
| things. Everything was turning into a short/reel/tiktok already,
| add llms for quick answers to the formula and that's a perfect
| recipe for disaster
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _add llms for quick answers to the formula and that 's a
| perfect recipe for disaster_
|
| I understand some books are worth their weight in gold. The
| real worry is, now that LLMs can "deep search" & present larger
| reports, some of which I read religiously without gaining much
| for the time invested, I find myself preferring shorter
| answers.
|
| That is, the feedback mechanism (of larger LLM output being too
| verbose than being too substantive) is reinforcing rewards for
| shorter and shorter text spans.
|
| Then when I switch to reading long form articles, long
| instructional/educational videos, or book chapters, I have
| caught myself running out of patience and reaching for
| summarisation by LLMs (sometimes, when I've bothered to check
| the original source, LLMs have thoroughly misinterpreted or
| skipped key thesis/points... Kind of the reverse "miss the
| forest for the trees").
| intellectronica wrote:
| 1. Quality and information-density vary widely. The author of the
| post lists some of the least useful (but popular) business books,
| but there are better ones. The benchmark for me is does the book
| contains specific, actionable recommendations I can use to
| bootstrap how I do something I don't already know how to do well
| and want to get started. If it doesn't it really is just fluff.
|
| 2. Even if these books are not that rich in applicable advice, if
| you read the book and reflect on it and maybe 1% of it is
| relevant to you and results in some new ideas, is it not worth
| it?
|
| 3. All of these business books now have alternative, compressed
| representations on YouTube, podcasts, and blogs. Asking a chatbot
| to review a few of those and produce a summary is often more
| efficient than reading the book itself. Usually these books have
| enough content worth for a 3 pages long summary, not for an
| entire book. And of course you can also listen to an interview
| with the author or a review from a trustworthy critic, or watch a
| video.
| veunes wrote:
| It's not that all business books are worthless, but the article
| nails how so many are written more to inspire than to inform.
| They often flatten complex stories into digestible slogans, which
| can feel empowering in the moment but rarely translate into
| meaningful action.
| cainxinth wrote:
| > In practice, customers buy based on utility and price, not
| ideology.
|
| That's not always the case and it varies by sector. A lot of B2B
| firms may buy that way, but B2C transactions often have emotional
| or ideological drivers as well.
| christophilus wrote:
| I hate business books with fluff in them. I'm not here to read
| your poem.
|
| On that note, my brother sent me a book called "Zero Down" by
| Roland Frasier. It was 75 pages, and not once did I think, "They
| should've trimmed the fat here."
|
| That's how these books should be written.
| ike2792 wrote:
| Apple is actually a great example of the MVP concept working. The
| original iPhone had no front camera, a crappy back camera, a low
| quality screen, no App Store, and no copy/paste. What it had was
| a great "feel" and it was intuitive to use. They released it,
| gathered feedback, and iterated.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I strongly dislike business books. Not because I'm disinterested
| in the topic or dislike the author, but because I'm put off by
| the presentation as having come up with some new magic formula (I
| did X and was successful, so all you need to do is X and you'll
| be successful too), when in fact 90% (95%? 99%?) of the time
| their success is due to a combination of luck, timing, common
| sense and perseverance (aka survivorship bias).
|
| I think my repulsion for these books also stems from how we
| attribute almost mythical status to some of these celebrity
| business leaders (i.e., Steve Jobs), to where when they do
| something that any reasonable and not-an-asshole person would do
| ("he said hello to me in the elevator!", "he wrote me a nice
| email!") we laud them with praise in amazement.
|
| I do admire what these people have accomplished, but the hero-
| worship is so off-putting that I have a hard time hearing the
| message.
| skwee357 wrote:
| Business books are like courses, master classes, etc.
|
| It's just a way to make you feel better because you read
| something, and now you think you know how it works, but you
| don't, so end up reading more and more of them.
|
| There should be a balance between reading and doing, i.e.
| consumption and production.
| ghaff wrote:
| One of the big problems in my experience is that strategies are
| often both interesting and useful. But the real results are very
| situational and depend on boots on the ground. I won't single out
| anyone in particular but I've definitely seen very sensible-
| seeming frameworks and approaches (which are hard to really argue
| with in the general case) that led to analyses that empirically
| turned out to be totally wrong for individual situations.
| primer42 wrote:
| MBAs are an entertainment degree, not a practical training for
| real organizations.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I'd say they're a signaling and networking degree.
| chesterhunt20 wrote:
| In my experience, I find that business books often lean more
| toward entertainment than providing actual strategic tools. While
| they can be a great source of inspiration and motivation, they
| don't always offer the practical, data-driven strategies that you
| can directly apply to your business. I appreciate the stories and
| insights they provide, but I believe that true strategy comes
| from real-world experience, experimentation, and adapting to the
| unique needs of your business.
|
| Reading business books can certainly help me think differently or
| spark new ideas, but for actionable strategies, I usually rely
| more on hands-on experience, mentorship, and tools that are
| specifically tailored to my industry. There's a time for
| inspiration, but when it comes to building something sustainable,
| it takes more than just theory.
| trentnix wrote:
| _> Reading "Business" Books Is A Waste Of Time_
|
| Yes, but they are significantly less destructive than an MBA.
| SonOfLilit wrote:
| I'm halfway through Feld and Mendelson's Venture Deals and
| earlier this year worked through Ittelson's Financial Statements.
|
| Having cofounded a startup that raised investor money before, I
| can state confidently that both are going to make me better at
| what I do next time I start something.
|
| Of course, they're not books about "what to do", just "how people
| do the basics". Which is harder because there's less ambiguity to
| hide behind. Sometimes my eyes glaze and I need to put them down
| and wait for a time when I have more energy.
| npilk wrote:
| If business books are just entertainment, then better to read
| more fiction!
| simplesolutionZ wrote:
| When ever I read an article like this, claming one perspective
| and interpretation of content. I always remember that everyone
| has different minds and different ways they make connections
| between concepts and understanding in their brains. Thats why we
| don't have a single narrative on how to create understanding of
| any concept. It's quite sad, I feel sad for the author for his
| lack of intelectual discovery.
| hn30000 wrote:
| The only business book I've read is that one about management by
| the CEO of Intel (I forget the name). It helped me a lot with my
| first big corporate client because until then I had only worked
| at startups and small businesses. I literally didn't understand
| what the purpose of meetings was, etc. Anyway, I haven't been
| compelled to pick up any other business books as most of the
| popular ones seem like self/help books.
| altilunium wrote:
| I thought "Personal Interlude: Lessons From My Quant Trenches"
| was just another business book title ready to be criticized. I
| wondered why the formatting was different on this one, then I
| slowly realized it wasn't a business book title at all.
| aerhardt wrote:
| Business books and self-help books are for the most part utter
| garbage and you are possibly going to generate more economic
| value for your business or your career by reading Vargas Llosa or
| Tolstoy than by reading all that airport drivel.
| hliyan wrote:
| There's another, similar genre of non-fiction books: Sapiens,
| Outliers etc. I notice these tend to be unusually popular with
| people who have too short an attention span to absorb knowledge
| rigorously (e.g. high net-worth individuals), and would rather
| prefer it be weaved into a narrative, even at the cost of some
| accuracy. Bonus if the narrative confirms their preconceived
| notions. For a while, I myself was guilty of consuming both these
| and business books. I still occasionally read them, but now I
| recognise them as entertainment and am under no illusion about
| rigour or practical application.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > I notice these tend to be unusually popular with people who
| have too short an attention span to absorb knowledge rigorously
|
| Airport literature.
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| Those books switch reader's nob one click up, so they become 1%
| more informed than the average who haven't read the same
| content (yet). That 1% looks/sounds incredibly a lot more.
| "OMG, he said neanderthals and homo-sapiens coexisted somewhere
| in time. What a genius!". This kind of reaction.
| theturtle32 wrote:
| Finally, someone putting into words what I have felt intuitively
| ever since the concept of an "MVP" and the obsession around A/B
| testing came into vogue. The quotes that most resonated with me:
|
| ---
|
| The MVP concept is often overused to justify low-quality
| products.
|
| Metrics are treated as precise guides without accounting for
| interpretation or strategy.
|
| ---
|
| When I entered the startup world, I mistakenly followed the MVP
| playbook. We launched too early, misread feedback, and ended up
| iterating around noise. What saved the company wasn't lean
| methodology. It was building something so good that users
| couldn't ignore it. I've hired engineers who were obsessed with
| quality and passed on candidates with vague "passion."
| poobear22 wrote:
| I read so many business books, and they are hard to get rid of
| after you have amassed a large collection of several hundred. On
| reflection, many seem like crap, or maybe a good few points what
| could be summarized in a few pages but somehow turned into a long
| book. I'm still glad I read them, and the jewels have always made
| it worth the adventure. I really like looking back at the
| discredited books I've read and in hindsight, asked myself how I
| was fooled at the time in not detecting the the weaknesses in the
| books. It has always been a point of reflection to improve these
| detection skills when reading new material. For me, at the time
| of reading, the books: "In Search of Excellence" and "Think and
| Grow Rich" seemed great, but in hindsight, "What was I thinking".
| wespiser_2018 wrote:
| I'm not opposed to business books. It's true that most of them
| are in narrative form and try to extract anecdotal lessons into
| broad strategy, but I've found them useful for framing my own
| thinking about teams, strategy, and leadership. Thinking about
| your work, just in a different way, or though a different lens, I
| believe is helpful. How helpful? Probably not as much as making
| more decisions yourself, but at least in my environment I'm rate
| limited by circumstances beyond my control!
|
| That said, there are a couple of "good" business books, and I
| agree with the author on the works of Michael Porter (esp. On
| Competition) and ET Jaynes, Probability Theory: The Logic of
| Science. The later was a major influence on my life and pivotal
| book I read as a young scientist, and it moved me into the
| direction of data science!
| scoofy wrote:
| The best book on this subject I've read is _Fooled by Randomness_
| by Nassim Taleb. The entire premise is backward. You don 't just
| look at success to find the source of success with out
| introducing a massive amount of survivorship biases.
|
| https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/176225/fooled-by-ra...
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Damn, you could have cribbed this list from my own notes on
| various business/startup books over the years.
|
| I like the idea that business books have an emotional appeal. I
| think it comes from buying the book itself. The more famous a
| book is, the more people will feel good about reading it, no
| matter how little it practically benefits them. I think there's a
| related psychological effect where luxury items sometimes sell
| more when their price increases.
|
| I think that most business books hyperfocus on one or a few
| simplified "rules" (hell, Ray Dalio's book is literally called
| "Principles") and ignore any messy complications or cofactors. If
| you really want a laugh, read Smart's "Topgrading" which spends
| an entire half a book telling you that later chapters are going
| to really improve your hiring process, and the second half of the
| book repeating some simple rules without bothering to defend them
| against obvious objections. "Punished by Rewards" makes a simple
| case and then burns through the remainder of the pages dissing
| Skinner. "Built to Last" is a collection of anecdotes about
| business that make bold and authoritative statements that are
| still up for debate (such as where exactly Hewlett Packard went
| wrong). "Blitzscaling" hangs its entire thesis on the success of
| the Sambear brothers, which seems ridiculous to me.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-05-10 23:01 UTC)