9 must-read books for MBA students and aspirants
Updated on: Feb 17, 2017, 05.28PM IST by Ipsita Sarkar Gupta
A Masters of Business Administration (MBA) from a top business school (B-School) and you think you are ready to call the shots?
Hold on... B-School curriculum doesn’t teach everything you need in real life. It just makes you corporate world-smart.
Here’s a list of books – some old and some new – that we think can make an effect. These books have been hailed as 'a must-read' by many across the world. These books are about entrepreneurs, about real-life corporate situation, about turning around businesses and so much more.
So, look beyond your MBA course and preparation materials.
Presenting nine must-read books for MBA students and aspirants:
1. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Author: Stephen covey
Year: 1989
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is considered to be one of the most influential books. The author presents seven habits that have become famous because it ‘works’:
Habit 1: Be Proactive
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
Habit 3: Put First Things First
Habit 4: Think Win-Win
Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood
Habit 6: Synergize
Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw
The book has sold more than 15 million copies in 38 languages across the world while the audio version has sold 1.5 million copies. It remains one of the best selling non-fiction business books ever.
2. Connect the Dots
Author: Rashmi Bansal
Year: 2010
The book explores ‘the ardent lives of 20 true-life entrepreneurs without an MBA degree’ and how they chalked out their own success. The book has three sections – Jugaad, Junoon and Zubaan. The Jugaad section focus on entrepreneurs who have no formal business training, Junoon talks about people who have a strong desire to tread a particular idea, and the final section, Zubaan, delves deeper into lives of people who are creative but do not have a platform to showcase it.
Connect The Dots has sold over 100,000 copies and was shortlisted for the Economist Crossword Popular Award in the year 2010.
3. Beyond the MBA Hype: A Guide to Understanding and Surviving B-Schools
Author: Sameer Kamat
Year: 2013
Why is it a must read?
"Because it talks about the non-glamorous side of MBA,” says Sameer Kamat. “Most books talk about how to get into the programs. Most magazines and online articles highlight the fantastic salaries that MBA students get after graduating. This fuels unrealistic expectations among the applicants. And many of them get disappointed when their expectations of a super-high salaries, dream jobs and a radical career change aren't met. Beyond The MBA Hype tries to balance it out by highlighting what B-schools can and can't do. The intention is to make the reader a more informed consumer of the MBA degree,” says Sameer Kamat to Shiksha.com.
A recent publication, the book has got good reviews and is being hailed as a must-read (especially for India students).
4. The Halo Effect: ... and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers
Author: Phil Rosenzweig
Year: 2007
In this unconventional book, the author unmasks the delusions of the corporate world which affect the business press and academic research, including various bestselling books. The author claims that he wrote the book over a period of 25 years (view source). Readers have called it a management book which is scientific and palatable.
“The most pervasive delusion is the Halo Effect. When a company's sales and profits are up, people often conclude that it has a brilliant strategy, a visionary leader, capable employees, and a superb corporate culture. When performance falters, they conclude that the strategy was wrong, the leader became arrogant, the people were complacent, and the culture was stagnant. In fact, little may have changed -- company performance creates a Halo that shapes the way we perceive strategy, leadership, people, culture, and more,” reads the book's summary on Amazon.
The author brings out examples of top firms like Cisco, IBM, Nokia, and ABB to explain the Halo Effect.
5. Outliers
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Year: 2008
Malcolm Gladwell examines the factors that create successful people and high-achievers. He brings in Canadian ice hockey players, Bill Gates, The Beatles and other examples to examine 'perceived intelligence' and rational decision making. Gladwell talks about a '10,000-Hour Rule' and claims that the key to success is about practicing a specific task for 10,000 hours.
6. The World Is Flat
Author: Thomas L. Friedman
Year: 2005
Friedman talks about his concept of ‘flattening’ of the world in the early 21st century, what it means to countries across the globe, companies, communities, and individuals. “History of the world twenty years from now, and they come to the chapter 'Y2K to March 2004', what will they say was the most crucial development? The attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the Iraq war? Or the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world's two biggest nations, giving them a huge new stake in the success of globalization? And with this 'flattening' of the globe, which requires us to run faster in order to stay in place, has the world gotten too small and too fast for human beings and their political systems to adjust in a stable manner,” reads the book summary.
7. How to Win Friends and Influence People
Author: Dale Carnegie
Year: 1936
Published around 78 years ago, this book is still a best-seller. The book teaches the importance of communication at work, how to handle people, ways to make people like you, and so on. It talks about how to achieve enlightened interpersonal effectiveness, gain holistic perspectives, and express ideas in ways that are heard. Till date, the book has sold more than 15 million copies.
8. Straight From the Gut
Author: Jack Welch
Year: 2005
Learn about how ‘the world's toughest boss’ Jack Welch defied conventional wisdom and turned General Motors (GE) in to a ‘lean and mean engine of growth and corporate innovation.’ In 1980s, Welch (known as Neutron Jack) laid off more than 100,000 workers. In the book, he reveals the facts behind this act, the difficult decisions involved, and how he built GE into one of the most successful companies in the world.
9. Freakonomics
Author: Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
Year: 2005
Freakanomics, is a collection of ‘economic’ articles that delves into unusual and diverse subject, traditionally not covered by economists. The book explores the inner workings of a crack gang, truth about real-estate agents, secrets of the Ku Klux Klan, and so on. The stories present that economics is, at root, the study of incentives.
Disclaimer: Please note, the above list has not been presented in any order or ranking.
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