Top Business Strategy books curated by experts

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

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Top Business Strategy books recommended by experts
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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.

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

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-u…

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise.

HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy (including Featured Article "What Is Strategy?" by Michael E. Porter)

HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy (including Featured Article "What Is Strategy?" by Michael E. Porter)

Is your company spending too much time on strategy development—with too little to show for it? If you read nothing else on strategy, read these 10 articles (featuring “What Is Strategy?” by Michael E. Porter). We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the mos…

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise.

Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour Through the Wilds of Strategic Management

Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour Through the Wilds of Strategic Management

Strategy Safari makes sense of a field that often seems to make no sense. Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel pair their sweeping vision of strategy making with an authoritative catalog in which they identify ten schools of strategy that have emerged over the past four decades.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise.

Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works

Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works

It provides a framework for businesses to follow in order to be successful. The book outlines five key choices that a business needs to make: defining a winning aspiration, deciding where to play, figuring out how to win, identifying core capabilities, and setting up management systems.

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.

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

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 Brusk…

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise.

The Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World

The Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World

"The Lords of Strategy" tells the story of the people and consulting firms that first defined what corporate strategy was. They showed the business world the benefits of making well-informed decisions about how you're going to compete. Will you try to beat the competition by having lower costs, …

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise.

Blue Ocean Strategy

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.

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

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 offe…

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise.

How to be a Chief Operating Officer: 16 Disciplines for Success

How to be a Chief Operating Officer: 16 Disciplines for Success

Chief Operating Officer is one of the most complex senior management roles in organisations today. It embraces a range of disciplines, from Technology to Human Resources, from Legal to Risk. Yet, unlike other senior executive roles, there is no established framework or body of knowledge to suppo…

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise.

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

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 a…

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

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 organiza…

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise.

Your Next Five Moves: Master the Art of Business Strategy

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 y…

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise.

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