Book recommendations for business leaders: 8/31/17

Aug 31, 2017 | Reading Lists

Stephen King says that if you want to be a writer, there are two things you must do: read a lot and write a lot. This is about the “read a lot” part. I include reading lists and book reviews that will help you do business more effectively and write better for business.

In this post, I point you to reviews of The Mathematical Corporation, Machine, Platform, Crowd, Behaving Badly: The New Morality in Politics, Sex, and Business, Built For Growth: How Builder Personality Shapes Your Business, Your Team, and Your Ability to Win, and Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins.

From Michael McKinney: The Mathematical Corporation

“A mathematical corporation is one that takes advantage of machine intelligence by collaborating with it to achieve leading-edge results. It will require a shift in your thinking. ‘As a leader,’ say Josh Sullivan and Angela Zutavern in The Mathematical Corporation, ‘you need to evolve your focus to excelling through imagination, creativity, reasoning, and problem structuring.'”

From the Economist: What will business technology look like tomorrow?

“IN 2014 Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published ‘The Second Machine Age’. The book was a balanced portrait of how new digital technologies were poised to improve society, even as they increased unemployment and depressed wages. In their latest work, ‘Machine, Platform, Crowd’, the authors seek to explain the business implications behind these developments.”

From Wharton: Technology and the Decline of Morality

“‘It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit,’ says a character in Noel Coward’s play, Blithe Spirit. The decline of morality is on public display more than ever. Technology lets the world see people everywhere behaving badly: Videos of fights in public quickly go viral, folks bicker and bully on social media, and many think nothing of posting nearly naked photos for the world to see. Former media executive and business consultant Eden Collinsworth explores the fluid lines of morality in her book, Behaving Badly: The New Morality in Politics, Sex, and Business.”

From Skip Prichard: How A Leader’s Personality Impacts the Ability to Win

“Many business books are written on how to innovate, achieve faster growth, or beat the competition. I’ve not read many that focus on the personality of the leader. But the founder’s personality has a dramatic impact on all aspects of the company culture and its potential. That’s the core focus of Chris Kuenne and John Danner’s new book, BUILT FOR GROWTH: How Builder Personality Shapes Your Business, Your Team, and Your Ability to Win.”

From Theodore Kinni: The Sore Loser and the Supercomputer

“Chess champion Garry Kasparov replays his historic loss to Deep Blue to illuminate the potential of AI.”

Reading recommendations are a regular feature of this blog. Want more recommendations about what to read? Check out my Three Star Leadership blog and Michael McKinney’s LeadingBlog.