Top Business Strategy books recommended by experts

At MentorCruise, we are all about making the most out of the experience of others. As part of that, we've connected and asked dozens of experts and professionals about their favourite Business Strategy books – and here are the answers.

Table of Contents

Fundamentals of Business Strategy

Understanding the concepts of Business Strategy starts with understanding the fundamentals. On your way to mastery, it's crucial for you to understand how certain concepts were derived, and why things work like they do. Starting with these resources is the best way to do so.

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don't

The Challenge: Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? The Study: …

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Key Strategy Tools: The 80+ Tools for Every Manager to Build a Winning Strategy

Key Strategy Tools: The 80+ Tools for Every Manager to Build a Winning Strategy. "A fabulous compendium of tools, woven into a no-nonsense strategy process. An enormously helpful book, invaluable to novices and experts alike." "A really practical guide to strategy development.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... and Others Don't

Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? The Study: For years, this…

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist's Guide to Success in Business & Life

It's the art of anticipating your opponent's next moves, knowing full well that your rival is trying to do the same thing to you. Though parts of game theory involve simple common sense, much is counterintuitive, and it can only be mastered by developing a new way of seeing the world.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Blue Ocean Strategy

BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY is the simultaneous pursuit of differentiation and low cost to open up a new market space and create new demand. It is about creating and capturing uncontested market space, thereby making the competition irrelevant.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Additional Business Strategy Reading

These books are not required for you to learn Business Strategy, but they are highly recommended for you to deepen your knowledge.

Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

“Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action” by Simon Sinek offers a fresh perspective on leadership and organizational success. By understanding the power of starting with “why,” leaders can inspire action, build trust, and foster meaningful connections with their teams and customers.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

The Essential Advantage: How to Win with a Capabilities-Driven Strategy

In The Essential Advantage: How to Win with a Capabilities-Driven Strategy, we maintain that success in any market accrues to firms with a coherence premium — a tight match between their strategic direction and the capabilities that make them unique.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Your Strategy Needs a Strategy: How to Choose and Execute the Right Approach

In a business environment that is changing faster and becoming more uncertain and complex almost by the day, it's never been more important―or more difficult―to choose the right approach to strategy. In this book, The Boston Consulting Group's Martin Reeves, Knut Haanæs, and Janmejaya Sinha offer a proven method to determine the strategy approach that is best for your company. They start by he…

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Do More More Naturally: Empowering Effortless Success and the Freedom to Be Yourself

Imagine getting up every morning psyched for work and ending your day with plenty of energy for your personal life. What if you could do more than merely exist in survival mode?
How would you feel if you could thrive — without having to change who you are?
Authors David Kolbe and Amy Bruske invite you to break free from the mounting stress of your learned routines and embrace a new path …

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs

Legendary venture capitalist John Doerr reveals how the goal-setting system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) has helped tech giants from Intel to Google achieve explosive growth—and how it can help any organization thrive.
In the fall of 1999, John Doerr met with the founders of a start-up whom he'd just given $12.5 million, the biggest investment of his career. Larry Page and Sergey Br…

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors

Electrifying in its simplicity—like all great breakthroughs—Porter’s analysis of industries captures the complexity of industry competition in five underlying forces. Porter introduces one of the most powerful competitive tools yet developed: his three generic strategies—lowest cost, differentiation, and focus—which bring structure to the task of strategic positioning. He shows how competitive…

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Specializations and Deeper Business Strategy Knowledge

You've got your basics in order – time to move on to some advanced and specialized concepts. Business Strategy is evolving every day, these books can help you master it.

Business Strategy: Managing Uncertainty, Opportunity, and Enterprise

What is strategy? For many it is the application of a theory, model or framework. In this book Spender develops a different creative approach. Emphasizing that firms face uncertainties and unknowns (knowledge gaps) he argues that the core of strategic thinking and processes rests on the organization's leaders developing newly imagined solutions to the opportunities that these uncertainties ope…

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Your Next Five Moves: Master the Art of Business Strategy

Both successful entrepreneurs and chess grandmasters have the vision to look at the pieces in front of them and anticipate their next five moves. In this book, Patrick Bet-David translates this skill into a valuable methodology that applies to high performers at all levels of business. Whether you feel like you’ve hit a wall, lost your fire, or are looking for innovative strategies to take you…

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

This list is curated by MentorCruise and can include Amazon affiliate links. Have any other suggestions? Add here.

Augment your Business Strategy books

There is no better source of accountability and motivation than having a personal mentor. What used to be impossible to find is now just two clicks away! All mentors are vetted & hands-on!

Only 1 Spot Left

I am a technology leader, focusing on cloud, data and AI with 15+ years in the industry. I spent the last 6 years at Google, leading teams to go from ideation to business outcomes. I was responsible for crafting our global sales strategies, with a strong emphasis on data and …

$300 / month
  Chat
4 x Calls
Tasks

Only 2 Spots Left

I've been building and leading digital products and strategies across multiple roles in telecom and finance, from cloud computing solutions to tokenization & blockchain technologies. As a product leader, my main goal is to deeply understand market needs and customer pain points, ensuring the solutions we create deliver real value …

$200 / month
  Chat
2 x Calls
Tasks

Only 5 Spots Left

Hello! I'm Curtis and I'm a Task Force Operations Manager at Amazon. I specialize in improving cost & quality in our day to day operations. I have 5 years of Amazon experience and 12 years of Operations experience overall. I am passionate about helping people reach their goals and setting …

$80 / month
  Chat
2 x Calls
Tasks

Only 5 Spots Left

Hi, I’m a Product Manager with over 7 years of experience in product management and analytics. I’ve led complex integrations and delivered data-driven insights to enhance decision-making and user experiences. I specialize in bridging product and analytics to drive impactful results. If you’re aiming to become a product manager, advance …

$30 / month
  Chat
1 x Call
Tasks

Only 5 Spots Left

Hi All, I am Nidhi, I live in London. Born and brought up in India, I have now lived and worked in 4 countries in 3 continents. Currently, I am working as Finance Manager in Amazon London and very passionate about topics ranging from Women in Finance, Corporate Developement, Career …

$240 / month
  Chat
4 x Calls
Tasks

Only 2 Spots Left

🏆 Ranking among the top 1% of mentors! Hi, I’m Jason, a seasoned digital marketing expert with extensive experience to share! Over the past 15+ years in this fast-paced industry, I have helped many businesses and individuals achieve their goals, no matter how difficult. (Make sure to check out my …

$290 / month
  Chat
4 x Calls
Tasks

Browse all Business Strategy mentors

Still not convinced?
Don’t just take our word for it

We’ve already delivered 1-on-1 mentorship to thousands of students, professionals, managers and executives. Even better, they’ve left an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for our mentors.

Find a Business Strategy mentor
  • "Naz is an amazing person and a wonderful mentor. She is supportive and knowledgeable with extensive practical experience. Having been a manager at Netflix, she also knows a ton about working with teams at scale. Highly recommended."

  • "Brandon has been supporting me with a software engineering job hunt and has provided amazing value with his industry knowledge, tips unique to my situation and support as I prepared for my interviews and applications."

  • "Sandrina helped me improve as an engineer. Looking back, I took a huge step, beyond my expectations."