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.

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

Software as a Science: Unlock Limitless Recurring Revenue Without Losing Control

Every SaaS company on earth is careening towards its next revenue plateau. It’s called a Growth Ceiling—a moment in time where growth stops, and you’re losing just as many customers as you’re bringing in. It’s not an opinion—it’s just how recurring revenue businesses work.
The good news? Growth Ceilings are preventable—as long as you know how to predict them and apply the right revenue grow…

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for a Faster-Moving World

Accelerate highlights the iterative nature of the 8-step process, the importance of aligning people around a Big Opportunity, and how to create an organization that is both efficient and reliable, and fast and agile enough to respond to today's challenges.

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Strategy That Works: How Winning Companies Close the Strategy-to-Execution Gap

“Strategy That Works demonstrates how capabilities shape successful markets, enable winning companies, and sustain on-target execution. The case for capabilities-driven strategy strengthens with every turn of the page.”

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The innovator's dilemma

The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen explains how successful companies fail by sticking to their established business models, overlooking disruptive innovations. It offers a framework to help managers anticipate and respond to market changes.

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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.

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

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It

Never Split the Difference takes you inside the world of high-stakes negotiations and into Voss's head, revealing the skills that helped him and his colleagues succeed where it mattered most: saving lives.

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

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.

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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

The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy

The modern American economy was the creation of four men: Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan. They were the giants of the Gilded Age, a moment of riotous growth that established America as the richest, most inventive, and most productive country on the planet.

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.

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

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

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

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Alex is an experienced professional with a track record of international consulting engagements in the UK, Switzerland, Germany and the US and holds a B.Sc. in Business Informatics and M.Sc. in International Business. He is a curious and driven personality with the innate ability to capture and release hidden potentials …

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Who am I? I have 12 years hands-on expertise in building and managing innovative fintech and AI solutions. Currently, at Mastercard I'm a Technical co-founder of a portfolio of six fintech products, driving their end-to-end lifecycle from ideation to global market launch. Currently leading six teams totalling 110 team members. …

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With 12+ years across Amazon, startups, and high-growth industries, I’ve built programs, scaled marketplaces, and led global teams. At Amazon, I hired and built a team of 8 members from scratch (conducting 120+ interviews), launched 20+ projects across Europe to reduce customer returns and improve brand protection, tripled SaaS revenue …

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With over five years of experience in growth marketing across B2B and B2C spaces—on both the agency and client side—I’ve seen it all. Navigating the wild world of digital marketing can feel like trying to assemble IKEA furniture without the instructions. But don’t worry—I’m here to help you make sense …

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I currently run my own sales consulting & coaching company. When you're ready, I can help you to overcome your most pressing sales challenges. I specialize in turbocharging commercial teams and am passionate about helping people get better at SALES, a seriously misunderstood craft. In the past, I've helped over …

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