10 Best Business Books of 2014

[sarmin sultana]

These 10 business books were the real eye-openers for entrepreneurs in the year 2014.

1. How to Be a Power Connector
Author: Judy Robinett
Subtitle: The 5 50 100 Rule for Turning Your Business Network Into Profits
Best quote: "For you to become a master of strategic relationship, you need to do more than just connect, care, and add value (although those elements are the most basic requirements of any relationship). You need to 1) pinpoint the relationships you will pursue and nurture; 2) reach beyond just friends, family, and profession and build a wide network of connections; 3) use a system for adding value to those contacts regularly; and 3) become the connector between connections--the person who can help people reach a resource they would never know about and could never reach if it weren't for you."
2. The Ambitious Woman
Author: Esther Spina
Subtitle: What It Takes and Why You Want to Be One
Best quote: "If you want to be successful, then you must choose to do what ambitious people do. How about the stay-at-home mom who knows how to handle her kids and keeps her home running smoothly--she's successful. What about the woman who can balance her career and family--she's successful. The woman who is determined to earn her degree, the woman who is a visionary and is making her dream a reality, the woman who is consistent in character and the way she lives life--they are all successful. Why? Because they are Ambitious Women."
3. Money: Master the Game
Author: Anthony Robbins
Subtitle: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom
Best quote: "The secret to wealth is simple: Find a way to do more for others than anyone else does. Become more valuable. Do more. Give more. Be more. Serve more. And you will have the opportunity to earn more--whether you own the best food truck in Austin, Texas, or you're the top salesperson at your company or even the founder of Instagram."
4. The Gen Z Effect
Authors: Tom Koulopoulos and Dan Keldsen
Subtitle: The Six Forces Shaping the Future of Business
Best quote: "The generational divides have stood in our way for so long, undermining our ability to innovate in what is quickly becoming a post-generational world. Post-generational thinking requires that we not only change our individual perceptions of the boundaries between generations, but also build organizations that can do the same."
5. Scrum
Author: Jeff Sutherland
Subtitle: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time
Best quote: "Traditionally, management wants two things on any project: control and predictability. This leads to vast numbers of documents and graphs and charts ... Months of effort go into planning every detail, so there will be no mistakes, no cost overruns, and things will be delivered on schedule. The problem is that the rosy scenario never actually unfolds ... Every project involves discovery of problems and bursts of inspiration. Trying to restrict any human endeavor of any scope to color-coded charts and graphs is foolish and doomed to failure. It's not how people work, and it's not how projects progress. It's not how ideas reach fruition or how great things are made."
6. The Soft Edge
Author: Rich Karlgaard
Subtitle: Where Great Companies Find Lasting Success
Best quote: "Innovation in companies is very much like a healthy immune response in living organisms. People who enjoy long-term health don't have episodic bursts of health. They are healthy nearly all the time. Their immune systems routinely fight off most threats. Can the same be true of companies? The analogy fits. In great companies, innovation is a natural response to threats."
7. The Carpenter
Author: Jon Gordon
Subtitle: A Story About the Greatest Success Strategies of All
Best Quote:
•   I vow to stay positive in the face of negativity;
•   When I am surrounded by pessimism, I will choose optimism;
•   When I feel fear, I will choose faith;
•   When I want to hate, I will choose love;
•   When I want to be bitter, I will choose to get better;
•   When I experience a challenge, I will look for an opportunity to learn and grow;
•   When I experience a setback, I will be resilient;
•   When I meet failure, I will fail forward, toward future success;
•   With vision, hope, and faith, I will never give up and will always move forward toward my destiny;
•   I believe my best days are ahead of me, not behind me;
•   I believe I'm here for a reason and my purpose is greater than my challenges;
•   I believe that being positive not only makes me better, it make everyone around me better;
•   So today and every day I will be positive and strive to make a positive impact on the world.
8. Scaling Up Excellence
Authors: Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao
Subtitle: Getting to More Without Settling for Less
Best quote: "Savvy leaders know that just bombarding employees with a quick PowerPoint presentation, a few days of training, or an inspirational speech won't cut it if they want to spread some goodness from the few to the many. Certainly, there are junctures in every scaling effort when it is wise to choose the easier path or secure a quick victory. Yet as we dug into case after case, and study after study, we saw that every allegedly easy and speedy scaling success turned out to be one we just hadn't understood very well. Scaling requires grinding it out, and pressing each person, team, group, division, or organization to make one small change after another in what they believe, feel, or do."
9. Creativity, Inc.
Authors: Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace
Subtitle: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
Best quote: "The best managers acknowledge and make room for what they do not know--not just because humility is a virtue but because until one adopts that mindset, the most striking breakthroughs cannot occur. I believe that managers must loosen the controls, not tighten them. They must accept risk; they must trust the people they work with and strive to clear the path for them; and always, they must pay attention to and engage with anything that creates fear. Moreover, successful leaders embrace the reality that their models may be wrong or incomplete. Only when we admit what we don't know can we ever hope to learn it."
10. Business Without the Bullsh*t
Author: Me (plus the readers of this blog)
Subtitle: 49 Secrets and Shortcuts You Need to Know
•   "The most timely book of 2014." --Guy Kawasaki
•   "The perfect gift." --Forbes.com
•   "All killer, no filler." --New Hampshire Union Leader
•   "The most useful, snappy career book I have seen in maybe five years." --Penelope Trunk
Best quote: "Conventional wisdom is that business is complicated and its principles difficult to master. However, while every industry and every profession requires specific expertise, the business of business tends to be rather simple. However, the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of management consultants, industry analysts, and corporate trainers depends on keeping things complex--because, after all, once you realize the business is simple, why would you hire them? Beyond your own area of expertise, all you need to be truly successful in the business world is a handful of secrets and shortcuts. And that's what Business Without the Bullsh*t is all about."


Source: http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/10-best-business-books-of-2014.html

Sarmin Sultana
Assistant Coordination Officer
BBA Program

[ummekulsum]

A very good information indeed...

[Farhananoor]

Thanks for sharing.