This article showcases our top picks for the
Strategy Books For Business. We reached out to industry leaders and experts who have contributed the suggestions within this article (they have been credited for their contributions below).
We are keen to hear your feedback on all of our content and our comment section is a moderated space to express your thoughts and feelings related (or not) to this article
This list is in no particular order.
This product was recommended by Kshitij Nigam from Cheef Botanicals
Your business’ makes it or breaks it through the implementation of certain strategies that are fit to your business environment: its unpredictability, your unique strength and power, plus how hard it is to succeed in your industry. It’s significant to know how to find out what is best for your company based on these factors. The authors of this book simplifies how to figure out which strategies are fit depending on your business environment and serves as a reminder; anytime you pick it up, you’ll be able to re-assess your business and its success.
This product was recommended by Chad Brinkle from High Country Offroad
I would recommend The Innovator’s DNA as a strategy book for business. This book is a must-read for anybody who wants to build a business that can disrupt the big businesses out there. It is well written and presents a powerful case for businesses to learn from innovators. It provides a framework for innovators to further understand their patterns of innovation and how to further develop them. This can help businesses be more innovative in their operations and grow faster than their competitors. This book has helped me get some clarity on how I can improve our product using the principles of disruptive innovation. It doesn’t provide any step-by-step guide on how to create an innovative product, but it does give you some interesting patterns to look for and how to think about innovation..
This product was recommended by Jay Soni from Yorkshire Fabric Shop
Good Strategy Bad Strategy is one of the greatest books on strategic thinking. Richard Rumelt evaluates successful tactics and identifies characteristics that contribute to their success. The author also describes the characteristics of terrible plans and offers advice on how to recognize bad methods. In addition, the book discusses issues including leverage, proximate goals, and chain link systems. Stories from organizations like Apple, Wal-Mart, Toyota, and Roche are included in each section to serve as examples. Good Planning The field manual for developing and assessing strategic systems is called Bad Strategy. The book enables readers to cut through the filler and create more effective plans.
This product was recommended by Caitlyn Parish from Cicinia
Julie Barber shares her proven six-step process and covers everything you need from communicating your vision through to ensuring you have the right structure and scalability of your startup to showcase your company at its best and wow your potential investors. Aside from that, the six Investor Ready steps outlined in this book will also enable you to: – Prove your Market fit and impact – Provide business Numbers that give investors confidence – Build your ideal Investor Profile and find investors who match it – Create a Pitch and Business Plan that will wow potential investors
This product was recommended by Paula Glynn from Pixelstorm
This book is a must-read for anyone in business. It provides a clear and concise framework for thinking about any strategic situation, whether you’re a CEO, small business owner, or simply looking to improve your productivity. The book is divided into three sections: The first section, The Winning Aspiration, defines what it really means to play to win and lays out the five key principles of the strategy. The second section, The Choice, explains how to make the right strategic choices by understanding your unique capabilities and mapping them to the opportunities in your market. The third section, The Execution, provides a step-by-step guide to putting your strategy into action and delivering results. Playing to Win is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand how strategy works and how to create a winning strategy for their business.
This product was recommended by Becca Klein from BeccaKlein
The Innovator’s Dilemma is a great strategy book for businesses because it helps businesses identify and address disruptive changes in their industry. Christensen provides a framework for understanding how and why disruptive innovations occur, and he offers practical advice for how businesses can respond to them. The book is full of real-world examples of companies that have successfully navigated disruptive change, making it an invaluable resource for anyone looking to do the same.
This product was recommended by Leigh McAlpin from Classic Architectural Group
The best book on a strategy that I have read in the last year is The Outsiders by William Thorndike. The book profiles eight exceptional CEOs who have generated outsize returns for their shareholders and discusses the lessons that can be learned from their successes. I particularly enjoyed Thorndike’s discussion of the importance of focus and execution in achieving superior results. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in strategy and business leadership.
This product was recommended by Andrew Tsionas from Kaizenzo
The Strategy Paradox is a great book that has inspired many entrepreneurs to change their strategies. The book is written in a way that makes it easy to understand for entrepreneurs and not just for strategists. It helps you realize that most businesses are all about execution, and strategy is the least important part of the process. It focuses on the importance of understanding your customer’s needs and desires instead of just focusing on profits. It’s a good read for any entrepreneur or business person who understands that in today’s constantly changing world, long-term plans are not worth the paper they’re printed on.
This product was recommended by Maria Orlandi from Simon & Schuster
Discover the path to financial freedom with this step-by-step guide to house hacking—the simple real estate investment strategy that lets you live for free and earn income. In The Everything Guide to House Hacking, you will learn: -The pros and cons of house hacking -The minimum you need to get started -What a smart investment looks like -Whether renovating is worth it -How to be a responsible landlord -How to find responsible tenants -And more! Discover everything you want to know about homeownership and how you can build wealth from your investment properties. The path to financial freedom starts here.
This product was recommended by Mark Good from Bingo Sites Guru
Anyone looking to build their business acumen will find a lot of advice in strategy books. Top titles offer insights and frameworks for making decisions, achieving goals, and overcoming challenges. While there are many different books to choose from, here my favourite strategy book for business: Good to Great by Jim Collins is a comprehensive study of how successful companies achieve long-term growth. Collins and his team identified a set of principles that these companies have in common, and he offers readers practical advice for putting these principles into practice.
This product was recommended by Georgi Todorov from Thrive My Way
I recommend Blue Ocean Strategy by W.Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. This book is recognized as one of the most iconic and impactful strategy books ever written, and it’s recently been updated and expanded with two new chapters to shed even more insight. The authors present a systematic approach to creating an uncontested market space that makes competition irrelevant. They outline principles and tools your organization can use to create and capture your own blue ocean.
This product was recommended by Ruben Gamez from SignWell
I couldn’t put Christensen’s book down because it’s the strategy used by incredibly successful industry dominators like Amazon and Uber. He moves the focus away from understanding customers to addressing your customers’ “jobs” they’re “hiring” products to fulfill. The theory is more predictive than other approaches and leads to far better (and more successful) designs.
This product was recommended by John Li from Fig Loans
Bet-David offers a book that’s full of insightful, actionable advice to help you guide business strategy. Banking on the techniques of chess grandmasters, you’ll learn to look ahead and anticipate your next five moves. Though his methods are certainly time-consuming, his logic-driven strategies have helped leaders see their companies through massive growth.
This product was recommended by Alan Lee from Hairbro
It is one of the most in-depth business strategy books you will ever read. It enables the reader to make better decisions and increases the likelihood of business success. This is the book to read if you’re starting a business and want to learn more about business strategies to implement.
This product was recommended by Sharon Dylan from Management Help LLC
In the business world, branding is almost everything. This book will teach you about brand identity, how to create one, and how to make it known so people will associate your brand with high quality and greatness. This will surely teach you how to set your goals and how to achieve them with its step-by-step process. Hence, this book is an all-in-one that is definitely a must-read for every business.
This product was recommended by Mark Coster from FairyDigital
If you’re looking for a classic book related to business strategy that holds well today, I’d highly recommend The Innovator’s Dilemma. It’s available on Amazon as a paperback, hardcover, or audiobook. It touches on the tricky problem of disruption vs. current market dominance and how innovative technologies of the past (then present) found their way to dominate the market. It’s a wonderful history lesson on its own. It also covers how businesses fail to adapt to change. It’s a must-read for anyone concerned with becoming stagnant, especially in today’s ever-changing market environment.
This product was recommended by Brandon Wilkes from The Big Phone Store
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries is an excellent book for businesses of all sizes. It is full of actionable advice on how to create a successful startup by using the lean methodology. The book provides a step-by-step guide to implementing lean principles in your business, and it is packed with real-world examples and case studies. If you are serious about creating a successful startup, then this is the book for you.
This product was recommended by Karim Hachem from Sunshine 79
“The Personal MBA” by Josh Kaufman needs to be on your shelf. Not everyone went can go to business school, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be successful in the business world – sometimes the best strategy is to take the less traveled road! I picked this book up, thinking I’d thumb through it, but once I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down. Especially if you’re just starting out and wanting guidance, this book will teach you how to build a business from the ground up with no formal business school training. It taught me the core principles and tools to conceptualize, create, and then operate my own business. It also gave me the courage and confidence to trust myself and my ideas as an entrepreneur and leader. This book has been a huge influence on my journey as an entrepreneur and I highly suggest it to anyone who’s looking to enter the business and create a company that is successful and uniquely their own.
This product was recommended by Shaun Martin from Cash For Houses
It is a great book for business leaders, managers, owners, directors, or anyone looking at the lifecycle of a business. Authors Chris Zook and James Allen teach how to develop and spread a specific mindset throughout the company to grow a business. The book also defines the three main crises faced by organizations and how to overcome each one of them. If you want to know how to deal with recessions and make your business prosper, this is the book for you!
This product was recommended by Steve Baker from The Great Game of Business
The Great Game of Business lays out an entirely different way of running a company. It wasn’t dreamed up in an executive think tank or an Ivy League business school or around the conference table by big-time consultants. It was forged on the factory floors of the heartland by ordinary folks hoping to figure out how to save their jobs when their parent company, International Harvester, went down the tubes.
This product was recommended by Louis Russell from Kuhamia
The book from the former co-founder of PayPal, Zero to one is an excellent note guide on how to plan strategically to flourish a business. The author Peter Thiel gives promising parameters essential for the development of each organization. The book talks about the strategies, ideas, and considerations he took for the business. He also explained the factors needed for the growth of the business and tips to stand out in the marketplace. The book is best for the growth and development of startups into successful companies.
This product was recommended by Mike Davis from Olive Tree Ridge
The book is timeless, as it focuses on fundamental concepts (value) + skills (how to avoid errors). I appreciate that once you understand the fundamental definition of value as described in the book, you can adjust for flexibility in the definition since value can mean different things to different people. Lastly, I appreciate the emphasis that is placed on long-term strategies.
This product was recommended by Huzaifa Ahsan from FindPeopleFirst
Key Strategy Tools is an essential toolkit for business and strategic thinking. This collection of strategy tools, frameworks, and templates is too clear for all audiences to get lost, and it’s packed with useful information for business leaders who want to make the most of their time. One of the most difficult tasks that business owners face is knowing what to build, how to build it, and when. With Key Strategy Tools, you’ll have your roadmap for success laid out for you in a format that makes sense of all the tools and helps you understand how to use them.
This product was recommended by Robert Chapman from Elevate Hope
I really like how this book is laid out. It has excellent advice on how to create an attention grabbing one liner, a high quality website, the best approaches to creating a lead magnet, and how to create engaging sales and nurture emails. This book truly does help you develop a solid sales funnel that increases revenue and grows your business.