Readings

Here are some read­ings that I con­sider essen­tial for any­one, from man­agers to investors through entrepreneurs:

Macro Trends and Principles

Books/ Reports / etc.

• The Shift Index 2009: Macro­eco­nomic Report, Deloitte Cen­ter for the Edge — John Hagel, John Silly Brown, Lang Davi­son. Essen­tial read­ing, go get the PDF
• The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion
• The Col­lapse of Com­plex Societies
• Tech­no­log­i­cal Rev­o­lu­tions and Finan­cial Cap­i­tal: The Dynam­ics of Bub­bles and Golden Ages
• The Wealth of Net­works: How Social Pro­duc­tion Trans­forms Mar­kets and Freedom
• Unan­swered Ques­tions at Super­nova 2007 From John Hagel. In 2007, but rich set of ques­tions to pon­der on, essen­tial imo
• Seth Godin TED talk (sliced bread) enter­tain­ing and exem­plify sev­eral global shifts, go see if you don’t know it
• The Flight of the Cre­ative Class: The New Global Com­pe­ti­tion for Talent
• The Great Reset: How New Ways of Liv­ing and Work­ing Drive Post-Crash Prosperity

Blogs

• The Big Shift, HBR — John Hagel, John Silly Brown, Lang Davison
• John Hagel
• Umair Haque
• Umair Haque bis Bub­ble­gen, not updated sig­nif­i­cantly in a long time, but many old gems as good now as ever

Finance / Investment

Books/ Reports / etc.

• The Intel­li­gent Investor, Rev. Ed
• Mar­gin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Invest­ing Strate­gies for the Thought­ful Investor If the price is too much for you, zero­hedge has a gift for you here
• The Black Swan: Sec­ond Edi­tion: The Impact of the Highly Improb­a­ble: With a new sec­tion: “On Robust­ness and Fragility”
• Fooled by Ran­dom­ness: The Hid­den Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

Blogs

• Zero­Hedge sim­ply essen­tial, required, etc.
• The Big Picture
• Abnor­mal Returns
• Alphav­ille
• Mish Global Econ
• Infec­tious Greed
• Macro Man
• The Epi­curean Dealmaker
• Upside­Trader
• The Base­line Scenario

Strategy

Books / Reports / etc.

• The New Eco­nom­ics of Media: Micro­me­dia, Con­nected Con­sump­tion, and the Snow­ball Effect — Umair Haque from 2004 but impres­sive and thor­ough, one of the best work of Umair imo
• The Only Sus­tain­able Edge: Why Busi­ness Strat­egy Depends on Pro­duc­tive Fric­tion and Dynamic Specialization

Blogs

• The Big Shift
• Broad­stuff
• Jeff Jarvis
• Clay Shirky
• JP Ran­gaswami

Operational Efficiency

Books/ Reports / etc.

• Bar­gain­ing for Advan­tage: Nego­ti­a­tion Strate­gies for Rea­son­able Peo­ple best on nego
• Pre­dictably Irra­tional, Revised and Expanded Edi­tion: The Hid­den Forces That Shape Our Decisions
• The Upside of Irra­tional­ity: The Unex­pected Ben­e­fits of Defy­ing Logic at Work and at Home
• The Clue­train Man­i­festo: 10th Anniver­sary Edition
• The Wis­dom of Crowds
• Effec­tive Executive
• Judg­ment in Man­age­r­ial Deci­sion Making
• Strat­egy and Tac­tics of Pric­ing, (5th Edi­tion) best on pricing

Blogs

• Dan Ariely
• Seth Godin
• Tom Peters
• Altime­ter Group
• Dachis Group I must admit that I find the Head­shoft blog (below) con­tains most of my favorite posts, so sub­scribe to Head­shift if you want those only, or Dachis for all themes
• Head­shift
• Sameer Patel