Freakonomics

I'd recommend reading anything that helps develop your ability to understand and solve a problem. Triaging issues by importance and properly identifying their causes is critical in almost every aspect of business. Without that, you can easily spend a lot of time on the wrong problem, or an ineffective solution, and your time is, more or less, your most valuable commodity. So I'd suggest books like A Certain Ambiguity by Gaurav Suri and Hartosh Singh Bal, or Freakonomics by Stephen Levitt‎ and Stephen Dubner - books which will explore different ways of delving into problems and understanding their impact.

Question: What books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path?

Answer: I would recommend the following ones:

• The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• Who? How to recruit A players
• Les Cles du futur by Jean Staune (in French)
• All the books written by Peter Drucker (The Essentials of Drucker)
• The 4 steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank
• Freakonomics
• The books by Jack Welsh (especially for French people as it is somewhat contrarian to their education)

Reading 'Freakonomics' by Steven Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner, changed my perspective of the whole world. Such a well-researched piece of writing. Complete eye-opener how lots of successful people made it because they were at the right place at the right time, and not just an unidentifiable X factor. If you are looking for conversation starters ever, lots of them in this book.

I don’t need to say much here. This book invented an entire genre. Economics was never supposed to be this entertaining.

Here are some of the books that have been very impactful for me, or taught me a new way of thinking: [...] Freakonomics.

Back when it came out I wanted to do economics but for the wrong reasons. This book helped me fall in love with the subject and learn to think about the world in a slightly different way.

I like Freakonomics as being the best of its kind.