Best Books on Strategy & Innovation: Part 1
A couple of weeks ago a colleague at work asked me for my best recommendations for books on strategy. A week later, Helen Walters tweeted a request to followers to suggest their most essential books on innovation. Consider this list a “101” set for those passionate about strategy and innovation, as a gift list for that special strategist in your life, or the perfect set to make good on that New Year’s resolution to “learn more about strategy”. Absolutely essential books are noted as *Must Read*.
The list is broken down in three areas to be released in three separate posts: The Classics of Strategy, Innovation & Business Models, and Other Books of Note. This post, the “Classics”, refer to books written pre-2000 that introduce traditional models of strategy still useful today. Innovation & Business Models focus on recent books written in our current era of “Continuous Innovation”, post-2000, and illustrate a marked shift in strategic thinking to opportunity identification and iterative development as well as the movement from traditional business “planning” to more organic “modeling”. Other Books of Note is what it sounds like: it’s a grab bag of other works I’ve found useful that any strategist worth their salt should consider reading.
Part 1: The Classics of Strategy
I’ve arranged these works in order of their original date of authorship.
The Art of War by Sun Tzu (translated by Ralph D. Sawyer), 5th century BC, translated 1994
If you believe that a book on war strategy written 2500 years ago could have nothing to offer us in 2012, you would be wrong. A favorite quote of mine from the Art of War illustrates the point: “[success] without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence.” That quote, and the supporting thinking, could easily come out of of Blue Ocean Strategy or many other of today’s books on strategy. Sun Tzu offers similar new insight with each re-reading.
*Must Read* The Essential Drucker: In One Volume the Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management by Peter Drucker, published in 2001 but collected from a series of books written much earlier
Peter Drucker was a leader, a visionary, a prolific writer and the deepest of thinkers of the last century. If you haven’t read anything by the man who coined the term “Knowledge Worker” back in 1959, do yourself a favor and pick up this “Essential” anthology which collects some of the most important chapters of his writing across management, purpose, innovation, entrepreneurship, leadership and society. Given Drucker proposed the best definition on what the purpose of a company (or organization) is, it would be foolhardy to ignore him.
Diffusion of Innovations by Everett M. Rogers, 1962
The “grandaddy” of books on innovation, Diffusions was ahead of its time but still very relevant 50 years after it’s first release in the latest (5th) edition. Rogers initial study of why farmers weren’t adopting new agricultural methods, his subsequent research and synthesis set up every innovation thinker that followed. If you’re serious about mastering innovation thinking and wish to understand how innovation was viewed prior to it being a fashionable concept in strategy, you need to read this book.
*Must Read* Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance by Michael E. Porter, 1985
If you could pick just one book that would represent classic, rationalist school business strategy, it would have to be Competitive Advantage. Ever hear of the 5 forces? This is the book, following a series of legendary Harvard Business Review articles, that outlines what it is and how to use it. Executing a quick five forces analysis is something I still do at the start of every project. Understanding Porter, at the very least, gives one insight into how traditional strategists think about problems.
The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization, Peter M. Senge, 1990
While Drucker is undeniably the most innovative thinker in general management, Senge’s focus on organizational dynamics and mechanics provides an excellent treatise on how systems thinking can be integrated with, and applied to, strategy. Senge’s ability to connect sometimes disparate modes of thinking into a cohesive and useful whole for leaders and strategists is remarkable. His key notion of the “learning organization” is more relevant today than when he first introduced it over two decades ago.
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore, 1991
Crossing the Chasm was a massive hit at the time of its release in outlining how technology products were different from typical consumer goods. This was a big deal at the time as technology as a category only then became realistic to consider making a leap to average consumers. All and all, there are only a couple key points to take out of the book with a lot of stories illustrating these couple of points. The first point is that early adopters of tech products really aren’t the same as mainstream consumers and tech products have unique adoption curves. You can learn the second point by reading the book. It’s certainly an entertaining read.
Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World by Peter Schwartz, 1992
You could call Art of the Long View a one trick pony given it’s mostly one key concept with a lot of supporting stories. That all said, scenario planning is a pretty good trick and representative of one of the three classic schools of strategy, namely the processualist school. There are some newer books that tackle the topic in a more depth but these were less influential.
Competing for the Future by Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad, 1996
In Competing for the Future, Hamel and Prahalad popularized the notion of “Core Competencies”. Although interest on the concept has fallen out of favor, the book holds a host of gems on how companies need to define clear strategic intent and then understand what competencies will really “get them there”. Hamel continues to be a leading strategic thinker in the field while Prahalad’s important work focused on the base of the pyramid was cut short by a too early passing.
*Must Read* Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen, 1997
The Innovator’s Dilemma pushed the general business population to realize disruptive innovation was important to their businesses and critical to strategy. The first of many essential works by perhaps the greatest author on innovation ever, Dilemma is a tour de force illustrating why, as companies scale around a set of products and competencies, they fail to recognize initially smaller or less lucrative markets as their future or their demise. If there’s one book that really kicked off our era of Continuous Innovation, this is it and is still the best of many fantastic books Christensen has written.
Needless to say, this list could have easily been edited down or expanded. Given it’s one individual’s recommendations, it would be great to hear from readers to see what other works might be recommended. Contact me via twitter to make other suggestions and I’ll include those in an update to this post in a week or so. Expect my next post Monday, which will outline relevant books in Innovation and Business Modeling.