Best Books for Product Managers

Recommended by Bogdan Iordache (Co-Founder/How to Web)

Source: Bogdan Iordache: Recommended Books and Learnings

I read this book at a time when Udemy was rapidly growing—over the 18 months where we went from 30 to 200 people. It was helpful to read about Horowitz's challenges, worries, and triumphs when addressing the same types of issues at a similar stage of growth. There are so many big decisions you need to make where there's just no clear-cut, right or wrong answer. There are a lot of gray areas. You gather information from your team, but the hard decisions rest with you. This book helped me realize that while I needed to carefully and objectively consider feedback, I was responsible for making a decision in the end—even when it was an unpopular one.

Dennis Yang

CEO/Udemy

This book is amazing—it didn't change my mind, so much as it has changed the way I think. It helps to understand the difference between the way you make quick decisions, versus considered decisions—it takes different mechanisms in the brain. Understanding which you're doing at any given time can have a profound impact on what you ultimately decide.

John Lilly

Partner/Greylock Partners

It's important that we make this transformation, because of what Clayton Christensen calls "the innovator's dilemma," where people who invent something are usually the last ones to see past it, and we certainly don't want to be left behind.

Steve Jobs

Founder/Apple

Recommended by Marc Goodman in "Tools of Titans".

Marc Goodman

Founder/Future Crimes Institute

Recommended by Dragos Novac (CEO/Nordic 9)

Source: Dragoș Novac Sharing His Favorite Books

This is a key component in my Purple Cow thinking, but with a twist. I'm not as worried about the chasm as I am about the desire of marketers to go for the big middle.

Seth Godin

Author & Entrepreneur

I've seen so many people thrust into management in high-growth companies with so little guidance. From now on, I will hand them this book. Its practical wisdom is immediately useful for the newly minted manager — and us old ones.

Evan Williams

Co-Founder/Twitter, CEO/Medium

There are the normal ones that everybody loves. There would be "Rich Dad Poor Dad," "Who Moved My Cheese?;" I love all the Dale Carnegie books; "The One Minute Manager." I love newer ones like "Blue Ocean Strategy" and all the "Freaknomics" books.

Daymond John

Founder/FUBU

I picked up the book after Grove passed away this year and I found it so succinct, so clear, and so packed with easy-to-understand analogies. It really gets to the heart of what good management is.

Julie Zhuo

VP Product Design/Facebook

Part of ambition is modeling yourself after those you’d like to be like. Austin’s philosophy of ruthlessly stealing and remixing the greats might sound appalling at first but it is actually the essence of art. You learn by stealing, you become creative by stealing, you push yourself to be better by working with these materials. Austin is a fantastic artist, but most importantly he communicates the essence of writing and creating art better than anyone else I can think of. It is a manifesto for any young, creative person looking to make his mark. Pair up with Show Your Work which is also excellent.

Ryan Holiday

Founder/Brass Check

This book taught me a valuable lesson about focusing on what’s most important and saying no to everything else. This approach freed up my time dramatically; suddenly focusing on sales and strategy was something I did, not something I wanted to do. If you’ve ever found yourself stretched too thin, feel simultaneously overworked and underutilised, or, and this one was a biggie for me, feel like your time is constantly being hijacked by other people’s agendas, then Essentialism is the game changer you’ve been looking for. This book changed my life and the business.

Heather Baker

CEO/TopLine Comms

If you are reading to learn skills that can be implemented in your startup, I’d recommend The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful by Eric Reis and actually avoid its predecessor The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products That Win by Steve Blank until later in your career.

Craig Pearce

Co-Founder/Kid Genius

Ruimin mentions this book in response to a question about long-term success. From Ruimin's point of view, the chief challenge is for leaders to maintain their entrepreneurial spirit, year after year. He admits it isn't easy:

Zhang Ruimin

CEO/Haier Group

I work in digital marketing so I would [recommend]: [...] Made to stick by Chip and Dan Heath.

Raluca Radu

Owner/MTH Digital

One book that actually helped me a great deal in the way I was communicating with my products and marketing, is Contagious by Jonah Berger, in which he describes “why things catch on” or “how to create viral content”. I did apply lots of his ideas and even inspired my team to work on those principles both online and offline. I remember reading it and taking notes (things I actually rarely do when I read, I like to be in it and absorb without being distracted by nothing) and really trying to soak in those principles. and I think I did.

Nicolas Jouvenceau

CEO/Pink Diamonds Boutique

The book is new (2017) and growthhacking is a real trend right now.

Kyrylo Taranenko

Head of Marketing/Y-Productive

Breathe to Succeed is an excellent prescription for any aspiring or current leader. Sandy Abrams’ new book offers valuable insights into addressing the hectic schedule and constant stress of everyone from an employee to the CEO. By understanding the causes and effects of stress on the human body, Sandy offers tools of the mind and breath to find your way through the storm and achieve optimal health.

Mark Bertolini

Former Chairman & CEO/Aetna

This book has been instrumental in how we think about developing talent at Facebook.

Sheryl Sandberg

COO/Facebook

Recommended by Andra Zaharia (Freelance Content Marketer/The Content Habit)

Source: Andra Zaharia - A Content Marketer's Reading List & Lessons Learned

I could probably name a dozen books here, but I’ll point out The Business Model Generation and Value Prop Design from Strategyzer. I steal from these constantly and are engrained in my work process. These books put into practice really taught me how to think. As soon as I saw that everything should have a foundation of empathy, what good user-testing looks like, how to test and iterate it changed everything. After that any problem could be solved. It wasn’t solving one big monolithic problem. It was going through a process.

Ashley Hathaway

Enterprise Product Manager

How to make amazing products. Super fun to read too.

Lewis Smith

Entrepreneur & Developer/BodyTracker

I could probably name a dozen books here, but I’ll point out The Business Model Generation and Value Prop Design from Strategyzer. I steal from these constantly and are engrained in my work process. These books put into practice really taught me how to think. As soon as I saw that everything should have a foundation of empathy, what good user-testing looks like, how to test and iterate it changed everything. After that any problem could be solved. It wasn’t solving one big monolithic problem. It was going through a process.

Ashley Hathaway

Enterprise Product Manager

A time management book. Personally, I like Manage your day-to-day by 99U. It is an extremely quick read, but provides some good insights for those who need some basic guidance regarding time management, especially in creative fields.

Andrew Elliott

Founder/GoDesignerGo

Recommended by Ola Olusoga (Co-founder/Populum)

Source: Interview with Ola Olusoga: How Books Have Guided His Path To Self-Discovery

While I was thinking of the best books to add to this short list, I realized that not even half of them are directly related to digital marketing. This is because I believe that the best marketers are people who understand human nature deeply and aim to bring out the best in it. Call me naive, but that’s how I see it. If I were to want to pursue a career in marketing, I’d read [...] Finite and Infinite Games.

Andra Zaharia

Freelance Content Marketer/The Content Habit

If you want to find a niche and adapt to the marketing, one of my favorite techniques is Inbound Marketing. Great book to understand what's inbound marketing and how you can use effectively this technique for your business or clients.

Ionut Danifeld

Co-Founder/DevMark.co

For people interested in designing or building software products: The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman and The Lean Product Playbook by Dan Olsen. Both books have informed my product sense and helped me make decisions about great UX.

Julia Enthoven

Co-Founder/Kapwing

I’m a technical guy. I studied the IT field and did software development for a long time until I discovered the business world. So the path for me is to slowly adapt from the clear, technical world, to the fuzzy, way more complex, business world. All the books that I recommend help this transition.

“Succeeding with Agile” - Mike Cohn: for approaching the process involved into building a product in an organized manner.

Nicolae Andronic

Founder/Echoz

Recommended by Ashley Hathaway (Enterprise Product Manager)

Source: Interview with Ashley Hathaway

Within Buffer, we have a concept where anyone is able to make any decision, provided they get advice from people who will be affected by the decision. It is the way we've found to envision a company without managers or bosses. We're still at the beginning of this journey, it's an exciting one to be on and I think we're creating an incredible company to be part of.

This decision making concept originates from a company called AES. I already mentioned Joy At Work, AES co-founder Dennis Bakke's first book and this is a fable he wrote to describe a company changing how they work and adopting the Advice Process.

Joel Gascoigne

Co-founder/Buffer

Perhaps Managing Humans by Michael Lopp would be the most practical - it's a great read, and for people making the leap from developer to manager, it's full of useful advice.

Dave Child

Founder/Readable & ApolloPad

Another worthy mention would be The 80/20 Manager: The Secret To Working Less And Achieving More, by Richard Koch.

Cristian-Dragos Baciu

Direct Response Copywriter

Jeff Bezos is known as an authoritarian leader. He has established rules, processes and methods that are strictly followed. Jeff’s Reading List is a list of 12 books Bezos expects Amazon employees to read. Many are related to business, but there are other themes as well.

Author Brad Stone who wrote the Bezos biography The Everything Store lists those 12 books. The author says the books have shaped Bezos’ leadership style and way of thinking. Lean Thinking is one of those 12 books.

Jeff Bezos

CEO/Amazon

Cashvertising is a virtual blueprint for persuading the consumer mind. It's fast, fun, and a must-read for businesses in all industries.

Roger Dawson

Author/Secrets of Power Negotiating

The book starts like a punch in the gut, but the story and the reality dose of this book are something that we all need from time to time in the Tech Startup Age. It helped me look beyond the excitement of working on new projects as a goal in itself and keep at least one foot on the ground. Plus the writing is extraordinary!

Irina Marinescu

Product Manager & Co-Founder/Save Potatoes

Recommended by Louis Nyffenegger (Founder/PentesterLab)

Source: Interview with Louis Nyffenegger

I don't know if you can teach this kind of creativity, but you can certainly raise your expectations by seeing how well they do design.

Seth Godin

Author & Entrepreneur

At last! A sales primer for the intelligent salesperson. It involves the salesperson actively in the customer's buying process instead of relying on jargon, slogans, and gimmicks.

Phil Duff

Former CFO/Morgan Stanley