Recommended Reads From The CEO Of Zhenai

OPW - Jan 10 - From time to time I'll ask the CEOs of top iDating companies what books they read and recommend.  Here's what Dr Song Li, the founder and CEO of high-flying Zhenai in China recommends as commendable books. - Mark Brooks

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For the past decade during which I have been an entrepreneur, I have read a lot of books on business and psychology. I have found 90% of them to be a complete waste of time as far as the practicality is concerned. But the following books have been useful to me as a business practitioner.

Personal Management:
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

Entrepreneurship:
I Can Make You Rich by Paul McKenna
Zero to One by Peter Thiel
Direct from Dell by Michael Dell

Management:
How Google Works by Eric Schmidt
Wining by Jack Welsh
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy

Strategy:
The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch
Blue Ocean Strategy by Chang Kim

Marketing:
Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout
The 21 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Product Development:
Lean Startup by Eric Ries

Innovation, Clayton Christensen:
The Innovator's Dilemma
The Innovator"s Solution
The Innovator's DNA

For me personally, the books above contain all the business theories I ever need to start and build a company, so I keep going back to read them instead of reading more books. The rest I just learn by practicing/trials & errors. Over the years, I have come to believe:

1. that at least as far as a business practitioner is concerned, there are only a handful of books worth reading. How do I know? I have read probably 20 times as many business books as these listed. Only these books have been worth my second-reading and I have really applied the principles in these books to my entrepreneurial work.  The other 200-300 business and applied psychology books I read made no difference to my career.
2. What's important is to identify the most useful books for you. What's useful to one person may not be useful to another person. Read them over and over. Quality is more important than quantity in order to really reach epiphanies, so to speak.

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