recommends / book
“The Bible and Tech in My Mind, there's Innovator's Dilemma and Innovator's Solution from Clayton Christensen. I think you have to read that book and I'd say I'd recommend to people that read it every few years. And the other one that I love is Ben Horowitz's book. Hard Thing about Hard Things really talks about how you manage your psychology when things get hard. I think those are the ones, I am not a big believer that you keep reading thousands of books all the time because I think to me, retention really matters. And my brain's just not that big that I can retain that much. So, I tend to distill the essence of a few things quite a bit more, and at least as the older I've gotten, I've actually used that pattern more.”
Jeetu Patel · Lenny's Podcast · AI is critical for humanity’s survival: Cisco president on the AI revolution | Jeetu Patel · 26 Feb 2026
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recommends / book
“It sort of is. The books that I'm... Clayton Christensen's stuff about The Innovator's Dilemma is always solid. Books on strategy that I recommend to other people on... There aren't that many. So, I like Playing to Win by Roger Martin. I really recommend other kinds of books, strategy books. It's easy to get a list of strategy books, but I think you should read biographies and histories. I think the book about Steve Jobs is brilliant. I like books about business leaders. I'd recommend Andy Grove's book Only the Paranoid Survive, and a few others, but I recommend that people read more broadly about people, Rockefeller's histories, it's fantastic. The stuff about Rockefeller and how he put together... Rockefeller was a robber baron and he built an empire and all that, you learn that in school, but what you don't learn in school is he dropped the cost of a gallon of kerosene from $1 to 10 cents. That's the robber baron, and he made kerosene so inexpensive that he drove all the little mom and pop proprietors out of business, which is why they hated him. So, he was a vicious competitor, but he dropped the price of something by an order of magnitude, fascinating. So, it's important to understand stories, not just theories, but stories.”
Richard Rumelt · Lenny's Podcast · Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt · 21 Jan 2024
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recommends / book
“These may not be the most unique, but I will say them, which is Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christiansen, whether you're working a large company and you're suffering it or you're working a startup and you're trying to out flank an incumbent, I still do think that and innovative solution, the follow on are the best books on product strategy to read. If you're moving into more of a leadership or management position, I think Radical Candor by Kim Scott is just incredible and worth everyone reading. Frankly, if you're a PM and you're doing soft influence, I think it's really important. Then the third one, which is maybe a little off the beat of path, there's a book called Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Goodwin who's a presidential historian. It's this amazing book that looks at four of the most notable presidents and how their leadership style evolved when they were in really critical hard times in their presidency. I just think it's actually the best book about leadership style and how do you evolve and how do you deal with crises, which again is maybe later on in your career. But I love getting inspiration from not just reading books about tech and product and I think that's one of the best ones.”
Noah Weiss · Lenny's Podcast · The 10 traits of great PMs, how AI will impact your product, and Slack’s product development process | Noah Weiss (Slack, Foursquare, Google) · 23 Jul 2023
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recommends / book
“Oh, 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. Definitely on that book. I'd just add books I've never recommended before. Probably Innovators Dilemma. It's probably my number one favorite book for product managers and product leaders.”
Ken Norton · Lenny's Podcast · How to unlock your product leadership skills | Ken Norton, Ex-Google · 24 Jul 2022
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