Growing A Business
by Paul Hawken
Paul started "Smith and Hawken", a garden lifestyle brand, with very little capital. He says that bootstrapping a business forces creative deployment of resources, and reliance on your resilience to take you to the finish line.
Lesson: Be disciplined, color outside the lines and set financial priorities.
The Innovator's Dilemma
by Clayton Christensen
Christensen coined the term “disruptive innovation” over 20 years ago and wrote about how the “little guy” can shake up an entire industry.
Lesson: Look for opportunities to disrupt and prepare for the next disruption once your business is established.
Blue Ocean Strategy
by W. Chan Kim
How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant. The authors argue that lasting success comes not from battling competitors but from creating "blue oceans"--untapped new market spaces ripe for growth.
Lesson: Questions are critical to success.
