12 Books Every Creative Entrepreneur Should Read
Being a manic bibliophile, I love taking a trip to my closest book store with a list of books I intend to check out. Upon searching around on Amazon, Indigo, and various other sources, I came up with a list of books I intend to read to help me with my creativity and business. Hence, I thought why not share this gem of a list with my readers to help them with their search of handy books to read this month (or the remainder of the year.)
1
From Ed Catmull, co-founder (with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter) of Pixar Animation Studios, the Academy Award–winning studio behind Inside Out and Toy Story, comes an incisive book about creativity in business—sure to appeal to readers of Daniel Pink, Tom Peters, and Chip and Dan Heath. Fast Company raves that Creativity, Inc. “just might be the most thoughtful management book ever.”
Excerpt From Amazon
2
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding how habits work.
Habits aren’t destiny. As Charles Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.
Excerpt from Charles Duhigg
3
Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod
When Hugh MacLeod was a struggling young copywriter living in a YMCA, he started to doodle on the backs of business cards while sitting at a bar. Those cartoons eventually led to a popular blog—gapingvoid.com—and a reputation for pithy insight and humor, in both words and pictures.
MacLeod has opinions on everything from marketing to the meaning of life, but one of his main subjects is creativity. How do new ideas emerge in a cynical, risk-averse world? Where does inspiration come from? What does it take to make a living as a creative person?
Ignore Everybody expands on MacLeod’s sharpest insights, wittiest cartoons, and most useful advice.
Excerpt from Amazon
4
Zero to One: Notes Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel
The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things.
Excerpt from Amazon
5
ThinkerToys by Michael Michalko
In this revised and expanded edition of his groundbreaking Thinkertoys, creativity expert Michael Michalko reveals life-changing tools that will help you think like a genius. From the linear to the intuitive, this comprehensive handbook details ingenious creative-thinking techniques for approaching problems in unconventional ways. Through fun and thought-provoking exercises, you’ll learn how to create original ideas that will improve your personal life and your business life. Michalko’s techniques show you how to look at the same information as everyone else and see something different.
Excerpt from Amazon
6
The Creative Habit, by Twyla Tharp
Creativity is not a gift from the gods, says Twyla Tharp, bestowed by some divine and mystical spark. It is the product of preparation and effort, and it’s within reach of everyone who wants to achieve it. All it takes is the willingness to make creativity a habit, an integral part of your life: In order to be creative, you have to know how to prepare to be creative. In The Creative Habit, Tharp takes the lessons she has learned in her remarkable thirty-five-year career and shares them with you, whatever creative impulses you follow — whether you are a painter, composer, writer, director, choreographer, or, for that matter, a businessperson working on a deal, a chef developing a new dish, a mother wanting her child to see the world anew.
Excerpt from Goodreads
7
Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.
Excerpt from Goodreads
8
Do you work at a breakneck pace all day, only to find that you haven’t accomplished the most important things on your agenda by the time you leave the office? With wisdom from 20 leading creative minds, 99U’s Manage Your Day-to-Day will equip you with pragmatic insights for using your time wisely and making your best work. We’ll show you how to build a rock-solid daily routine, field a constant barrage of messages, find focus amidst chaos, and carve out the time you need to do the work that matters.
Excerpt from Amazon
9
Too often, companies and individuals assume that creativity and innovation are the domain of the “creative types.” But two of the leading experts in innovation, design, and creativity on the planet show us that each and every one of us is creative. In an incredibly entertaining and inspiring narrative that draws on countless stories from their work at IDEO, the Stanford d.school, and with many of the world’s top companies, David and Tom Kelley identify the principles and strategies that will allow us to tap into our creative potential in our work lives, and in our personal lives, and allow us to innovate in terms of how we approach and solve problems. It is a book that will help each of us be more productive and successful in our lives and in our careers.
Excerpt from Goodreads
10
Imagine, by Jonah Lehrer
From the New York Times best-selling author of How We Decide comes a sparkling and revelatory look at the new science of creativity. Shattering the myth of muses, higher powers, even creative “types,” Jonah Lehrer demonstrates that creativity is not a single gift possessed by the lucky few. It’s a variety of distinct thought processes that we can all learn to use more effectively.
Excerpt from Goodreads
11
The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White
This style manual offers practical advice on improving writing skills. Throughout, the emphasis is on promoting a plain English style. This little book can help you communicate more effectively by showing you how to enliven your sentences.
Excerpt from Goodreads
12
It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be, by Paul Arden
The world’s top advertising guru, Paul Arden, offers up his wisdom on issues as diverse as problem solving, responding to a brief, communicating, playing your cards right, making mistakes, and creativity – all endeavors that can be applied to aspects of modern life.
Excerpt from Goodreads
I hope this list helped you get some start on compiling your reading list. I personally can’t wait to get started on it. I recently purchased Creativity Inc. and plan on reading it tonight (eeeeck!) Perhaps, I’ll write a review on it soon *winks*
If you have your own favourites that help sparkle some creativity in the brain, perhaps you can share some?
