The Best Business Books for MBA Students
- Management Economics
- Dec 22, 2018
- 5 min read
Updated: Dec 27, 2018
Reading is one of the best ways for MBA students to achieve a multi-perspective understanding of business and management principles. But you can't just pick up any book and expect to learn the lessons you need to know to succeed in today's business environment. It's important to choose the right reading material.
The following list features some of the best business books for MBA students. Some of these books are bestsellers; others are on required reading lists at top business schools. All of them contain valuable lessons for business majors who want to launch, manage, or work in successful companies.
This is a longtime bestseller in the management category, presenting data from a study of more than 80,000 managers at every level of business, from front-line supervisors at small companies to top executives at Fortune 500 companies. Although each one of these managers has a different style, the data trends show that the most successful managers break some of the most ingrained rules in management to attract the right talent and get the best performance out of their teams. "First Break All the Rules" is a good choice for MBA students who want to learn how to create a strengths-based organization.
This is one of several books on the required reading list at Harvard Business School. The principles within are based on interviews, case studies, academic research, and the experience of the two authors, Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao. Sutton is a professor of Management Science and Engineering and a professor of Organizational Behavior (by courtesy) at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Rao is professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resources at Stanford Graduate School of Business. This is a great choice for MBA students who want to learn how to take good program or organizational practices and seamlessly expand them across an organization as it grows.
"Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant," by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne was originally published in 2005 and has since been revised with updated material. The book has sold millions of copies and has been translated intro nearly 40 different languages. "Blue Ocean Strategy" outlines the marketing theory created by Kim and Mauborgne, two professors at INSEAD and co-directors of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute. The crux of the theory is that companies will do better if they create demand in uncontested market space (blue ocean) rather than fighting rivals for demand in a competitive market space (red ocean). In the book, Kim and Mauborgne explain how to make all the right strategic moves and use success stories across various industries to support their ideas. This is a great book for MBA students who want to explore concepts like value innovation and strategic alignment.
This is one of several books on the required reading list at Harvard Business School. The principles within are based on interviews, case studies, academic research, and the experience of the two authors, Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao. Sutton is a professor of Management Science and Engineering and a professor of Organizational Behavior (by courtesy) at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Rao is professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resources at Stanford Graduate School of Business. This is a great choice for MBA students who want to learn how to take good program or organizational practices and seamlessly expand them across an organization as it grows.
Dale Carnegie's perennial bestseller has stood the test of time. Originally published in 1936, it has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and is one of the most successful books in American history.
Carnegie outlines fundamental techniques in handling people, making people like you, winning people to your way of thinking, and changing people without giving offense or arousing resentment. This book is a must read for every MBA student. For a more modern take, pick up the most recent adaptation, "How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age."
Foster Provost's and Tom Fawcett's "Data Science for Business" is based on the MBA class Provost taught at New York University for more than 10 years. It covers fundamental concepts of data science and explains how data can be analyzed and used to make key business decisions. The authors are world-renowned data scientists, so they know a lot more about data mining and analytics than the average person, but they do a good job of breaking things down in a way that nearly every reader (even those without a tech background) can easily understand. This is good book for MBA students who want to learn about big data concepts through the lens of real-world business problems.
"The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career" is a New York Times bestselling career strategy book by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha that encourages readers to think of themselves as small businesses that are constantly striving to be better. Hoffman, who is the co-founder and chairman of LinkedIn, and Casnocha, an entrepreneur and angel investor, explain how to use entrepreneurial thinking and strategies used by Silicon Valley start-ups to launch and manage your career. This book is best for MBA students who want to learn how to build their professional network and accelerate their career growth.
Henry Mintzberg's "Managers, Not MBAs," takes a critical look at MBA education at some of the world's top business schools. The book suggests that most MBA programs "train the wrong people in the wrong ways with the wrong consequences." Mintzberg has enough experience to critique the state of management education. He holds the Cleghorn Professorship of Management Studies and has been a visiting professor at Carnegie-Mellon University, London Business School, INSEAD, and H.E.C. in Montreal. In "Managers, Not MBAs" he examines the current system of MBA education and proposes that managers learn from experience instead of focusing on analysis and technique alone. This book is a good choice for any MBA student who wants to think critically about the education they are receiving and seek out opportunities to learn outside of the classroom.
"Grit," by Angela Duckworth proposes that the best indicator of success is a combination of passion and perseverance, also known as "grit." Duckworth, who is the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and faculty co-director of Wharton People Analytics, supports this theory with anecdotes from CEOs, West Point teachers, and even finalists in the National Spelling Bee.
"Grit" isn't a traditional business book, but it is a good resource for business majors who want to change the way that they look at obstacles in their lives and careers. If you don't have time to read the book, check out Duckworth's TED Talk, one of the most viewed TED Talks of all time.
Ray Dalio's book made it to #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list and was also named Amazon's Business Book of the Year in 2017. Dalio, who founded one of the most successful investment firms in the United States, has been given impressive nicknames like "the Steve Jobs of investing" and "the philosopher king of the financial universe." In "Principles: Life and Work," Dalio shares hundreds of life lessons learned over the course of his 40-year career. This book is a good read for MBAs who want to learn how to get to the root cause of problems, make better decisions, create meaningful relationships, and build strong teams.
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