Were you the kid the librarian kicked out for staying too long?
That might've been us, too. We've gathered some favorite books here for your perusal—they represent our teams's perennial favorites and those which come highly-recommend from our network of mentors and colleagues. Check them out—and feel free to make a few suggestions, too.
Business Models and Product Ideation
Business Model Generation
This book covers the fundamentals of how business models work, including modern business models like the multi-sided platform, app sales and the like. It helps you validate, explain and focus your business planning efforts without going down rabbit holes or wasting time on the wrong planning efforts.
Value Proposition Design
Value propositions are perhaps one of the most overlooked—and most important—part of any business. A value proposition is the summation of the relationship between what a business is offering and what it solves or makes possible for its customers and partners. This book, which is structured as a process that can be used as a workshop or guided workbook process, will ensure that you properly identify your customers and what their true jobs, pains and gains are, surface assumptions you have about your offerings' value to others and create testable hypotheses to bring to the market before substantial investment in development occurs. It can save you countless hours of unproductive meetings or planning time, helps create a case for action for VC funding, and is fun to boot.
Career and Personal Skills
Business Model You
This title is a specific adaptation of the Business Model Generation content to the concept of a personal career path; it invites readers to use it as a workbook to explore the concept of their work as a business within a business, if they are to be employees, or a freelance business, if they are contractors. It is incredibly helpful at validating your potential (or current) contribution to a company and explaining that value to others, especially potential employers/clients, in a way which supports you creating or taking on unusual positions that might not have made sense in a traditional context. It also helps you to form a de facto rubric for evaluation of new opportunities which come your way.
