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 favourite Business Strategy books – and here are the answers.

  • Curated by industry experts
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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.

Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors

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, differentia…

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.

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.

Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant

Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant

In this perennial bestseller, embraced by organizations and industries worldwide, globally preeminent management thinkers W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne challenge everything you thought you knew about the requirements for strategic success. Recognized as one of the most iconic and impactful str…

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.

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

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.

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.

Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters

Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters

Developing and implementing a strategy is the central task of a leader. A good strategy is a specific and coherent response to—and approach for—overcoming the obstacles to progress. A good strategy works by harnessing and applying power where it will have the greatest effect. Yet, Rumelt shows t…

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise.

Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for a Faster-Moving World

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.

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

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.

The innovator's dilemma

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.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise.

Tilt: Shifting Your Strategy from Products to Customers

Tilt: Shifting Your Strategy from Products to Customers

“Tilt challenges us to place customers at the heart of strategy. With product cycles shortening and product costs shrinking, this book brings to life a deeper understanding of how strategy can be made more powerful. A must-read.”

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

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.

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.

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