June 24, 2014 – The Business of Social Games and Casino

I came across some great books this year, many of which I summarized in this blog, and thought it would be helpful to list the books I have found most valuable professionally over the years. I will focus, though, on the recent ones that have had a strong impact.

Thinking Fast and Slow
Any reading list I create must start with Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. It is by far the most important book I have read. Kahneman provides fantastic insights into decision making, which not only help you understand deeply your customers but also your own decision making processes. Although the book is somewhat dense and not an easy read, it will impact everything you do once you finish it.
Predictably Irrational
The perfect complement to Thinking, Fast and Slow, is Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. Ariely also focuses on decision making, from a behavioral economics perspective, but discusses it in a manner more entertaining than any novel I have read. This book has a certain point in my heart as Dan was on the Board of Advisors of my first company (Merscom), and his advice was as good as his book. This is a book you may stay up all night reading that will also help you build a much more successful product.
Hooked
Next on my list is Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal, a book I recently blogged about. Hooked is probably the hottest book among tech companies this year and presents a great framework for creating products that customers will keep coming back to.
Contagious
Jonah Berger’s Contagious: Why Things Catch On is probably the book I have quoted most this year. Another book I summarized earlier in the year, Contagious tells you how to generate word of mouth for your product based on real academic research, not urban myths that do not really work. I think I have quoted Contagious in more Quora answers than all other books combined (click here to read my post about Contagious).
Blue Ocean Strategy
I normally hate strategy books because they either focus on trite phrases with no practical value or use anecdotes that may or may not be transferable. Blue Ocean Strategy: How To Create Uncontested Market Space And Make The Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, on the other hand, is a book that helps you create a truly effective strategy (click here for my post on Blue Ocean Strategy). Like Contagious, it is based on academic research, and it provides a framework for building a truly great company.
The Innovator’s Dilemma
While The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of Innovation and Change) by Clayton Christensen may not be directly useful for many of you, it is most applicable to leaders of market leading companies, it provides a very helpful understand of how disruptive technologies emerge. For the game industry (which accounts for many of my readers), it is particularly illuminating and helps explain many of the shifts we have seen (my post on the key learnings from The Innovator’s Dilemma).
The Signal and the Noise
Finally, another thought-provoking book that helps you understand much better how to use analytics, and not misuse them, is The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don’t by Nate Silver. Nate Silver, best known for being the best prognosticator of the past two elections, destroys many of the fallacies around predictive models and provides a broad infrastructure on how metrics can help (read my post on the lessons I took away from the book).