Daniel Lieberman's Blog

Drop out of your MBA program, save a couple of hundred grand, and read The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business (Amazon link) by Josh Kaufman. Swallow it whole and keep coming back for quick introductions to business topics that you need to think about and learn about. The purpose of the book is to provide the cognitive tools for thinking effectively about everything business-related. It’s very sensible and teaches a flexible, empirical business style. For example, the section on Prototypes starts:

The classic MBA product development model is shrouded in secrecy and mystique: develop the offering in private, make everyone involved sign non-disclosure agreements, raise millions of dollars in venture capital, spend years making it perfect, then unveil your creation to the astonishment of the world and the thunderous sound of ringing cash registers.

Unfortunately, this mentality ruins careers and empties bank accounts. On their own, ideas are largely worthless…”

I can tell you from experience that the business I was in most of my life did a lot better by trying a lot of stuff and iterating on what worked that people wanted or needed than by adopting a version of the procedure described above (I’ll tell you the sad story some time). You learn by trying things, and improve them from the feedback you get. Since business products and services don’t exist in a vacuum, it’s a lot better to get feedback from your customers, vendors, and employees early and often and get them to help you debug your ideas. That way you don’t wind up out a lot of dough and time with a failure on your hands. If you have to fail (and you will, often, trust me), do it fast, learn something and start something else.

Ideas are almost worthless by themselves: what matters is how they work in the real world. Being secretive about them is harmful. Instead of letting them develop, businesses spend time and money obsessively keeping them secret. The value of your ideas is in the execution – your competitors can’t steal your excellence. And most ideas are pretty obvious, anyway.

The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business is great at providing frameworks for thinking about business: from Accounting ideas like Opportunity Cost and Return On Investment, all the way to Social Psychology ones like how The Human Mind conditions our business dealings (hint: we’re Cavepeople, not angels or MBAs).

What business books have you found valuable lately?