Business Books

[Dumar]

anyone that has a business degree, MBA or currently in management a response woudl be apprecaited.

my backgruond and education (and experience) are in soft engineering. i would like to make the move to business/management of my company sometime down the line (maybe get MBA). what books, or what kind of books would you recommend reading? i also have a minor in business, so i have a little education in accounting and finance.

what kind of books would actually help in real world? business strategy? management techniques? should i brush up on my accounting principles? i'm kind of at a loss.

thanks!

[Lyrical]

Originally Posted by Dumar

anyone that has a business degree, MBA or currently in management a response woudl be apprecaited.

my backgruond and education (and experience) are in soft engineering. i would like to make the move to business/management of my company sometime down the line (maybe get MBA). what books, or what kind of books would you recommend reading? i also have a minor in business, so i have a little education in accounting and finance.

what kind of books would actually help in real world? business strategy? management techniques? should i brush up on my accounting principles? i'm kind of at a loss.

thanks!

There are so many bad business books that have been written, its not funny. You might want to get a subscription to Businessweek. They cover many topics in business in all areas. A very successful businessperson I know that consulted CEO's of Fortune 500 companies once made the comment that he didn't know how any businessperson could go without reading BW every week. He also said the same for WSJ (although I flat out don't have the time to read that also and there is some overlap).

Other than reviewing your stuff from accounting and finance, you might also want to read books by Peter Drucker. You don't want to be the typical engineer that only focuses on the numbers, but never the soft issues of business (like management or marketing). It sounds to me like you kind of did what typical engineers do when looking for a business education. They tend to lean towards accounting/finance because it has more numbers (and they are more confident with numbers).

Business used to get a bad rap for only being qualitatitive, but as time goes on, quant is becoming just as important. In between my undergrad program in accounting, and my MBA program, there was a ten year gap. When I got back to b-school, I was so surprised how much more quant focused it had become. All of the sudden you are dealing with alot of statistics, multivariate regressions, queuing theory, data mining and database manipulations. Imagine looking at millions of data points of customers, looking for some causality, and then making action plans.

[Disp]

I agree, there are a TON of shit books out there. Get "The E-Myth" by Michael Gerber. Great book for any entrepreneur.

[tikkus]

Although more on the philosophical side of business, "Good to Great" by Jim Collins is an excellent book.

[Taranatar]

Dumar, you wouldn't happen to be trying to go to the LSU Ourso business school would you?

[Nazbuk]

We had to read '101 Biggest Mistakes Managers Make and How to Avoid Them' at my last job. It's probably the only one of these books I could read and not fall asleep reading. I've read a few others but nothing else comes to mind.

[Disp]

Also, Think And Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. One of the most inspirational books I've ever read.

[stehle]

Originally Posted by tikkus

Although more on the philosophical side of business, "Good to Great" by Jim Collins is an excellent book.

I'd second this. The nice thing about the book is that the conclusions were drawn from the data--not the other way around. I like theory, but I'd prefer to have the theory backed up by fact.