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This book has 6 recommendations
Seth Godin (Author & Entrepreneur)
This book is built around the brilliant insight that your prospect doesn't care nearly as much about what you do as you do, and thus you must boil down your offering into a unique slot that repositions the competition.Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)
I thought I might put my money where my mouth is. I keep whining that young people are not in touch with some essential books on advertising that have helped me shape the way I practise my trade today, but I never did anything about it. So I am starting here the ultimate books to read list. I will add to it as I get suggestions and as more good books get written.Tim O'Reilly (Founder/O'Reilly Media)
Positioning, and The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout. Anyone who wants to start a business with impact needs to read these books.Ola Olusoga (Co-founder/Populum)
Like Charlie Munger once said: “I’ve long believed that a certain system - which almost any intelligent person can learn - works way better than the systems most people use [to understand the world]. What you need is a latticework of mental models in your head. And, with that system, things gradually fit together in a way that enhances cognition. Just as multiple factors shape every system, multiple mental models from a variety of disciplines are necessary to understand that system". You can read this book to start building a "latticework of mental models in your head".Marvin Liao (Partner/500 Startups)
My list would be (besides the ones I mentioned in answer to the previous question) both business & Fiction/Sci-Fi and ones I personally found helpful to myself. The business books explain just exactly how business, work & investing are in reality & how to think properly & differentiate yourself. On the non-business side, a mix of History & classic fiction to understand people, philosophy to make sense of life and Science fiction to picture what the future could be like (not always utopian).Magda Marcu (Co-Founder/Sailo)
I am an avid reader, and there are many books that I found useful at various stages in my career. I especially recommend several books that I read during and after business school that helped me build up my business fundamentals:
Communicating in the business world: “Talking from 5 to 9: Women and Men at Work”
Leadership: anything by John C Maxwell or John P Kotter
Marketing: “Positioning: The battle for your mind”
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Amazon description
The first book to deal with the problems of communicating to a skeptical, media-blitzed public, Positioning describes a revolutionary approach to creating a "position" in a prospective customer's mind-one that reflects a company's own strengths and weaknesses as well as those of its competitors. Writing in their trademark witty, fast-paced style, advertising gurus Ries and Trout explain how to:
- Make and position an industry leader so that its name and message wheedles its way into the collective subconscious of your market-and stays there
- Position a follower so that it can occupy a niche not claimed by the leader
- Avoid letting a second product ride on the coattails of an established one.
Positioning also shows you how to:
- Use leading ad agency techniques to capture the biggest market share and become a household name
- Build your strategy around your competition's weaknesses
- Reposition a strong competitor and create a weak spot
- Use your present position to its best advantage
- Choose the best name for your product
- Determine when-and why-less is more
- Analyze recent trends that affect your positioning.
Ries and Trout provide many valuable case histories and penetrating analyses of some of the most phenomenal successes and failures in advertising history. Revised to reflect significant developments in the five years since its original publication, Positioning is required reading for anyone in business today.
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Seth Godin, Bogdana Butnar, Tim O'Reilly, Ola Olusoga, Marvin Liao, Magda Marcu
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Sources
- A reading list
- Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List
- Books That Have Shaped How I Think
- Interview with Ola Olusoga: How Books Have Guided His Path To Self-Discovery
- Book-Talk with Marvin Liao, Partner at 500 Startups, Avid Reader & Tsundoku
- Magda Marcu, Co-Founder of Sailo, on Her Love for Books & Women in Business
