If you aim to join the ranks of prosperous entrepreneurs, reading is an instrumental skill. Books lead us into new ways of thinking, help us push through the tough times, and teach us how to become efficacious business entrepreneur. From Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur here are 5 books you should read! 1. Grit to Great: How Perseverance, Passion, and Pluck Take You from Ordinary to Extraordinary In Grit to Great, Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval tackle a topic that is close to their hearts, one that they feel is the real secret to their own success in their careers — and in the careers of so many people they know and have met. And that is the incredible power of grit, perseverance, perspiration, determination, and sheer stick-to-it-tiveness. We are all dazzled by the notion that there are some people who get ahead, who reach the corner office because they are simply gifted, or well-connected, or both. But research shows that we far overvalue talent and intellectual ability in our culture. The fact is, so many people get ahead — even the gifted ones — because they worked incredibly hard, put in the thousands of hours of practice and extra sweat equity, and made their own luck. And Linda and Robin should know — they are two girls from the Bronx who had no special advantages or privileges and rose up through their own hard work and relentless drive to succeed to the top of their highly competitive profession.In a book illustrated with a cornucopia of stories and the latest research on success, the authors reveal the strategies that helped them, and countless others, succeed at the highest levels in their careers and professions, and in their personal lives. They talk about the guts — the courage — necessary to take on tough challenges and not give up at the first sign of difficulty. They discuss the essential quality of resiliency. Everyone suffers setbacks in their careers and in life. The key, however, is to pick yourself up and bounce back.Drawing on the latest research in positive psychology, they discuss why optimists do better in school, work, and on the playing field — and how to reset that optimistic set point. They talk about industriousness, the notion that Malcolm Gladwell popularized with the 10,000-hour rule in his book . Creativity theorist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi believes it takes a minimum of 10 years for one’s truecreative potential to be realized. And the authors explore the concept of tenacity — the quality that allows us to remain focused and avoid distraction in order to get the job done — an increasingly difficult task in today’s fragmented, cluttered, high-tech, connected world.Written in the same short, concise format as The Power of Nice and leavened with the natural humor that characterizes Linda’s and Robin’s lives — and books — Grit to Great is destined to be the book everyone in business needs.” Outliers 2. The Superhuman Mind: Free the Genius in Your Brain Did you know your brain has superpowers?Berit Brogaard, PhD, and Kristian Marlow, MA, study people with astonishing talents memory champions, human echolocators, musical virtuosos, math geniuses, and synesthetes who taste colors and hear faces. But as amazing as these abilities are, they are not mysterious. Our brains constantly process a huge amount of information below our awareness, and what these gifted individuals have in common is that through practice, injury, an innate brain disorder, or even more unusual circumstances, they have managed to gain a degree of conscious access to this potent processing power.“The Superhuman Mind” takes us inside the lives and brains of geniuses, savants, virtuosos, and a wide variety of ordinary people who have acquired truly extraordinary talents, one way or another. Delving into the neurological underpinnings of these abilities, the authors even reveal how we can acquire some of them ourselves from perfect pitch and lightning fast math skills to supercharged creativity.“The Superhuman Mind” is a book full of the fascinating science readers look for from the likes of Oliver Sacks, combined with the exhilarating promise of Moonwalking with Einstein.” 3. The Great Disruption: How Business Is Coping with Turbulent Times “The Great Disruption” is a collection drawn from Adrian Wooldridge’s influential Schumpeter columns in “The Economist” addressing the causes and profound consequences of the unprecedented disruption of business over the past five years.The Great Disruption has many causes. The internet is spreading faster than any previous technology. Emerging markets are challenging the west s dominance of innovation as well as manufacturing. Clever management techniques such as frugal innovation are forcing companies to rethink pricing. Robots are advancing from the factory floor into the service sector. But these developments are all combining together to shake business lifeand indeed life in generalto its foundations.The Great Disruption is producing a new class of winners, many of whom are still unfamiliar: Asian has more female billionaires and CEOs than Europe, for example. It is also producing a growing class of losers: old-fashioned universities that want to continue to operate in the world of talk and chalk; companies that refuse to acknowledge that competition is now at warp speed; and business people who think that we still live in the world of company man. It is forcing everybody to adapt or die: workers realise that they will have to jump from job to job and indeed from career to career and institutions realise that they need to remain adaptable and flexible.The Great Disruption is all the more testing because it coincides with the Great Stagnation. The financial crisis has not only reduced most people s living standards in the west. It has also revealed that the boom years of 2000–2007 were built on credit: individuals and governments were borrowing money to pay for lifestyles that no longer had any real justification. Employees are having to cope with unprecedented change at a time when they are also seeing their incomes flat or declining. Companies are having to respond to revolutionary innovations even as they are seeing their overall markets contract. We are all having to run faster in order to stay in the same place.This book begins with a long introduction explaining the thesis of the book and setting it in a broad historical context. It will also introduce readers to Joseph Schumpeter and explain why his ideas about creative destruction are particularly valuable today. 4. Think Big, Act Bigger: The Rewards of Being Relentless The most dangerous move in business is the failure to make a move.Global business celebrity and prime-time Bloomberg Television host, Jeffrey W. Hayzlett empowers business leaders to tie their visions to actions, advancing themselves past competitors and closer to their business dream. Drawing upon his own business back stories including his time as CMO of Kodak and sharing examples from the many leaders featured on The C-Suite with Jeffrey Hayzlett, Hayzlett imparts ten core lessons that dare readers to own who they are as a leader and/or company, define where they want to go, and fearlessly do what it takes to get there caring less about conventional wisdom, re-framing limitations, and steamrolling obstacles as they go.” 5. The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge The New York Times bestselling author of The Rational Optimist and Genome returns with a fascinating argument for evolution that definitively dispels a dangerous, widespread myth: that we can command and control our world. Human society evolves. Change in technology, language, morality, and society is incremental, inexorable, gradual, and spontaneous. It follows a narrative, going from one stage to the next; it creeps rather than jumps; it has its own spontaneous momentum rather than being driven from outside; it has no goal or end in mind; and it largely happens by trial and error a version of natural selection. Much of the human world is the result of human action but not of human design: it emerges from the interactions of millions, not from the plans of a few. Drawing on fascinating evidence from science, economics, history, politics, and philosophy, Matt Ridley demolishes conventional assumptions that the great events and trends of our day are dictated by those on high, whether in government, business, academia, or organized religion. On the contrary, our most important achievements develop from the bottom up. Just as skeins of geese form Vs in the sky without meaning to and ter-mites build mud cathedrals without architects, so brains take shape without brain-makers, learning happens without teaching, and morality changes for no reason other than the prevailing fashion. Although we neglect, defy, and ignore them, bottom-up trends shape the world. The Industrial Revolution, cell phones, the rise of Asia, and the Internet were never planned; they happened. Languages emerged and evolved by a form of natural selection, as did common law. Torture, racism, slavery, and pedophilia all once widely regarded as acceptable are now seen as immoral despite the decline of religion in recent decades. In this wide-ranging and erudite book, Ridley brilliantly makes the case for evolution, rather than design, as the force that has shaped much of our culture, our technology, our minds, and that even now is shaping our future. As compelling as it is controversial, as authoritative as it is ambitious, Ridley s deeply thought-provoking book will change the way we think about the world and how it works.” _________________ As always, let me know your thoughts on the topic. I’d love to hear your ideas and views in the comments below. Also, if you would like to read more captivating stuff on the topics of entrepreneurship, , social media, leadership, , innovation and venture capital via my regular posts then please click ‘Follow’ and feel free to connect via , , and . marketing technology SlideShare Twitter Facebook LinkedIn P.S. here are my & . other Articles on Linkedin Articles on Medium
