This is mostly for me, so I can look back on what I’ve read and see how much I read each year.

  1. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
  2. (I’m forgetting one here…WHAT WAS IT CALLED?!?!)
  3. Growth Hacker Marketing
  4. Lean Analytics
  5. The Thank You Economy
  6. David and Goliath
  7. The Innovator’s Dilemma
  8. Delivering Happiness
  9. Platform Revolution
  10. Monetizing Innovation

Looks like I got through 10 books this year, though I didn’t finish David and Goliath, and Growth Hacker Marketing was very short. I hope to do even better next year, but as someone who really doesn’t like reading, I’m pretty happy that I got through this many.

What’s Worth Reading?

Of the 10 I read, here are the ones I’d recommend to developers working in or interested in startups:

Read Lean Analytics if you want a step-by-step guide on how to launch a product in your new startup. It helped me realize we’re skipping some steps, but also that this is pretty common.

Read The Innovator’s Dilemma if you want a bunch of examples of how companies have disrupted industries in the recent past. Learn the real definition of disruption, not the overused version we have today.

Read Delivering Happiness if you want a feel-good success story about treating people the right way and actually coming out on top from it.

Read Monetizing Innovation to realize that you forgot a crucial step that was mentioned in Lean Analytics, and for a lot of detail about what someone in your position can do about it. That said, leave it to the pros - you should probably hire someone else to do the job. But at least now you know you’re missing an entire department in your company.

I’d recommend Platform Revolution to people not involved in development, but I think the concepts are pretty obvious to people in dev. It just puts some vocabulary on top of it and makes you think about it more than you otherwise might.