A New Product Dog is always learning. Always investing. Always improving. 

Your Reading Plan:

1.  Begin Here
2. Foundations

After these two sections, feel free to pick and choose from each category based on your interests and needs. You may want to go deeper within a topic  – or grab one from here and there. An asterisk is placed by the recommended first resource to be read (or viewed) first within each section. Do you have any suggestions for additions? Let us know.

Begin Here

• “Marketing Myopia”: Harvard Business Review – Theodore Levitt
• The Personal MBA – Josh Kaufman
• Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind–  Al Ries and Jack Trout
• *“Where does growth come from?”  – Lecture given at Google by Clayton Christensen (2016)

Foundations

• Blue Ocean Strategy – W. Chan Kim and Renee A. Mauborgne
• *Business Model Generation – Alexander Osterwalder et al
• Competitive Strategy – Michael Porter
• HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Innovation (Especially note “The Customer Centered Innovation Map by Lance Bettencourt and Anthony Ulwick)
• The Innovator’s Solution – Clayton Christensen
• New Product Blueprinting – Dan Adams
• “The Theory of the Business”: Harvard Business Review – Peter Drucker
• What Customers Want – Anthony Ulwick

Jobs-to-be-Done

• Jobs to be Done Playbook – Jim Kalbach
• “Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure”; Harvard Business Review – Clayton M. Christensen, Scott Cook and Taddy Hall
• The Innovator’s Guide to Growth -Scott Anthony, Mark Johnson, Joseph Sinfield and Elizabeth Altman
• Jobs to be Done: Theory to Practice – Anthony Ulwick
• What Customers Want – Anthony Ulwick
• *“Where does growth come from?”  – Lecture given at Google by Clayton Christensen (2016)
• Service Innovation – Lance Bettencourt
• The Statue in the Stone – Scott Burleson

Behavioral Economics  (or…”How Customers Make Decisions”)

• Drive – Daniel Pink
• How We Decide – Jonah Lehrer (This was pulled from the shelves due some apparent misstatements from interviews. Still, there’s a lot to be learned from this book)
• Made to Stick – Chip Heath and Dan Heath
• “Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure”; Harvard Business Review – Clayton M. Christensen, Scott Cook and Taddy Hall
• The Innovator’s Guide to Growth -Scott Anthony, Mark Johnson, Joseph Sinfield and Elizabeth Altman
• Jobs to be Done: Theory to Practice – Anthony Ulwick
• *Predictably Irrational – Dan Ariely
• Thinking Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman

Strategic Marketing

• HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Strategy
• Biodesign: The Process of Innovating Medical Technologies -Paul Yock and Stefanos Zenios (You don’t need to read this from cover to cover – the innovation material is the front half of the book.)
• Business Strategy Formulation – Anthony Ulwick (Out of print – but it’s a must read. Find one!)
• Differentiate or Die – Jack Trout and Steve Rivkin
• The Long Tail – Chris Anderson
• The Social Innovation Imperative – Sandra Bates
• Service Innovation – Lance Bettencourt
• “A Service Lens on Value Creation: Marketing’s Role in Achieving Strategic Advantage: California Management Review, Fall 2014 – Lance A. Bettencourt, Robert F. Lusch, and Stephen L. Vargo
• “Shaping a Job-Centric Service Innovation Strategy”: Marketing Management, March 2013 – Lance Bettencourt
• *Value Proposition Design – Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur
• “Why Hard-Nosed Executives Should Care about Management Theory”: Harvard Business Review – Clayton Christensen

Corporate Finance

• *“Innovation Killers: How Financial Tools Destroy Your Capacity to Do New Things”: Harvard Business Review – Clayton Christensen
• “The New M&A Playbook”: Harvard Business Review – Clayton Christensen, Richard Alton, Curtis Rising, and Andrew Waldeck
• “Profits Without Prosperity”: Harvard Business Review, 2014 – Bill Lazonick
• Warren Buffett and the Interpretation of Financial Statements – Mary Buffett and David Clark

Market Research

• Continuous Discovery Habits – Teresa Torres
• *Customer Visits – Edward F. McQuarrie (Out of print – but it’s a must read. Find one!)
• Deploy Empathy – Michele Hansen
• Marketing Research – Naresh K. Malhotra (This is a textbook – so not the best beach reading perhaps. But it is very thorough. A solid reference to own.)
• The Market Research Toolbox – Edward F. McQuarrie
• New Product Blueprinting – Dan Adams
• Qualitative Interviewing: The Art of Hearing Data – Herbert J. Rubin and Irene S. Rubin
• “The Voice of the Customer”, Marketing Science, 1993: Abbie Griffin and John R. Hauser (free on MIT’s site at this link)
• Voices into Choices – Christina H. Brodie and Gary Burchill

Data Analysis and Statistics

• The Cartoon Introduction to Statistics – Grady Klein and Alan Dabney (Don’t judge!)
• How to Lie with Statistics – Darrell Huff
• Naked Statistics – Charles Wheelan
• Statistics in Plain English – Timothy C. Urban
• Thinking Statistically – Uri Bram
• Turning Numbers into Knowledge – Jonathan G. Koomey
• *Quantifying the User Experience – Jeff Sauro and James R. Lewis

Process for New Product Development (NPD) and Innovation

• Customer-centric Product Definition – Shelia Mello
• Designing for Growth – Tim Ogilvie and Jeanne Liedtka
• The Lean Startup – Eric Ries
• *New Product Blueprinting – Daniel Adams
• The PDMA Handbook of New Product Development
• Winning at New Products – Robert G. Cooper

Idea Generation

• 40 Principles: TRIZ Keys to Innovation – Genrich Altshuller and Dana W. Clarke
• The Art of Innovation – Tom Kelley and Jonathan Littman
• The Four Steps to the Epiphany – Steve Blank
• The Innovation Algorithm – Genrich Altshuller
• The Ten Faces of Innovation – Tom Kelley and Jonathan Littman
• *Simplex: A Flight to Creativity – Min Basadur
• TRIZ for Dummies – Lilly Haines-Gadd

Product Design

• The Design of Everyday Things – Don Norman
• *Emotional Design – Don Norman
• The Inmates are Running the Asylum – Alan Cooper
• Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love – Marty Cagan
• The Persona Lifecycle – John Pruitt and Tamara Adlin
• Tuned In – Craig Stull, Phil Myers and David Meerman Scott

Technology Strategy

• Crossing the Chasm – Geoffrey A. Moore
• Diffusion of Innovations – Everett M. Rogers
• “Disruptive Technologies”: Harvard Business Review – Joseph L. Bower and Clayton Christensen
• *The Innovator’s Dilemma – Clayton Christensen
• Little Bets – Peter Sims
• “Meeting the Challenge of Disruptive Change”: Harvard Business Review – Clayton Christensen

Portfolio Management

• “10 Ways to Make Better Portfolio and Project Selection Decisions” – Robert G. Cooper, Scott J. Edgett
• The Alchemy of Growth – Mehrdad Baghai, Steve Coley, and David White
• Creating Bold Innovation in Mature Markets – Robert Cooper
• Enduring Ideas: The Three Horizons of Growth  – McKensie & Co
• .The Lords of Strategy – Walter Kiechel“
• New Problems, New Solutions: Making Portfolio Management More Effective” –  Robert G. Cooper, Scott J. Edgett, Elko J. Kleinschmidt
• *Portfolio Management for New Products – Robert G. Cooper and Scott J. Edgett
• Skate to Where the Money Will Be,”: Harvard Business Review – Clayton Christensen

Operations

• *The Goal – Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox
• Out of the Crisis – W. Edwards Deming

Innovation Culture

• The Essential Drucker – Peter Drucker
• The Myths of Innovation – Scott Berkun
• Leading Change – John Kotter
• *The Other Side of Innovation – Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble
• Unrelenting Innovation – Gerald Tellis
• Reengineering the Corporation – Michael Hammer and James Champy

Tactical Marketing and Sales

• *All Marketers are Liars – Seth Godin
• Demand-Side Sales 101 – Bob Moesta
• The One to One Future – Don Peppers and Martha Rogers (See the Case Study – “The Green and Gold Program” to see how I applied learnings from this book.)
• Permission Marketing – Seth Godin
• Relationship Marketing – Regis Mckenna
• SPIN Selling – Neil Rackham
• Tribes – Seth Godin
• Your Marketing Sucks – Mark Stevens

Productivity

• The 4 Disciplines of Execution – Chris McChesney and Sean Covey
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Steven R. Covey
• “The Effective Decision,”: Harvard Business Review – Peter Drucker
• *Getting Things Done – David Allen
• “Managing Oneself”: Harvard Business Review – Peter Drucker
• “The New Productivity Challenge”: Harvard Business Review – Peter Drucker

Howling Good Communication

• Confessions of a Public Speaker – Scott Berkun
• Influence – Robert Cialdini
• Never Split the Difference – Chris Voss
• *The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs – Carmine Gallo
• The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century – Steven Pinker
• Sin and Syntax – Constance Hale
• On Writing Well – William Zinsser
• Talk Like Ted – Carmine Gallo

New Product Dog Attitude

• 116 Meditations on the Art of Doing – Kyle Eschenroeder
• The Daily Drucker – Peter Drucker
• Ego is the Enemy – Ryan Holiday
• The Essential Wooden – John Wooden and Steve Jamison
• The Four Agreements – Don Miguel Ruiz and Janet Mills
• “How Will You Measure Your Life?”: Harvard Business Review – Clayton Christensen
• The Jungle Book – Rudyard Kipling
• *Meditations – Marcus Aurelius
• *“Nunc coepi” – Commencement Speech Given by Philip Rivers
• Poor Charlie’s Almanack – Peter D. Kaufman, Warren E. Buffett and Charles T. Munger
• Rework – Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
• Tools of Titans – Tim Ferriss
• “What Makes An Effective Executive”: Harvard Business Review – Peter Drucker
• “Why Peter Drucker Distrusted Facts”: Harvard Business Review – Peter Drucker