The Innovator's Dilemma

Book Summary: The Innovator's Dilemma

At some point, the incumbent’s product’s performance exceeds the demand of most customers. Then the “edge” that these performance metrics provided is lost, and the customers’ value proposition changes. They start valuing some other metrics, along which a disruptor’s product has better performance. The disruptor has an early mover’s advantage as well as leading to the demise of the incumbent.

The Education of Millionaires by Michael Ellsberg

Book summary: The Education of Millionaires

The book emphasizes heavily life education, glorifies college dropouts, and questions college education except for specialized fields like law and medicine.

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

How to Fail at Almost Everything by Scott Adams

The book is a humorous compilation of pragmatic lessons which Scott Adams learned while navigating his professional career.

The score takes care of itself

Book Summary: The score takes care of itself

The book is written by Bill Walsh - San Francisco’s 49ers Football team coach who transformed the worst-performing team of its era into the best-performing team. The book talks about the changes he brought in as well as his philosophy of leadership which is generic enough to apply outside of American Football. He is also known as the creator of the West Coast Offense.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Summary: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

The book talks about a set of habits which differentiates successful people from the normal. It criticizes [recently popular] personality ethic which it terms as deceptive and manipulative and calls for character ethic which is a fundamental change in human character. This change must begin from inside and spreads out [inside-out] and the reverse is not possible.

Built to Last (Successful habit of visionary companies)

Book summary: Built to Last by Collins & Porras

The book compares a set of 17 companies that are considered visionary with similar 17 companies of lesser stature. I am avoiding gory details of their methodology here. To derive theory from practice, the book aims at debunking common myths about visionary companies.