Professional Literature
Here, we encounter reality. Strategy isn’t always strategy, growth doesn’t happen on its own, and people are influenced—often more than we like to admit. These are the books that give you insight into what actually happens, not just what we hope will happen.
This page is continuously updated—a bit like digitalization: you’re never completely finished.
Professional Literature – G–I
Richard P. Rumelt explains why successful organizations create competitive advantage through clear priorities, long-term thinking, and the ability to confront challenges directly. The book shows how strategy is about choices, direction, and understanding the market—especially during periods of rapid change and economic pressure.
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Ryan Holiday describes how modern digital businesses use data-driven testing, experimentation, and continuous optimization to achieve rapid growth. The book shows how growth hacking combines marketing, product development, and analytics to understand user behavior and improve digital services through small, rapid iterations. Growth Hacker Marketing has become a key introduction to growth-driven digital marketing and startup culture.
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This classic business novel explains how bottlenecks and inefficient processes affect value creation in organizations. Through a story about leadership and continuous improvement, Eliyahu M. Goldratt introduces the principles behind the “Theory of Constraints”—how organizations can identify constraints and improve flow, collaboration, and productivity. The book has had a major influence on manufacturing, service design, logistics, and digital process improvement.
This book shows how modern organizations systematically drive growth through testing, data analysis, and rapid improvements. Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown describe how companies such as Airbnb, Facebook, and Dropbox used experimentation, user insights, and cross-functional teams to develop products and services that achieved rapid market growth. The book combines marketing, product development, and analytics into a practical approach to digital growth and innovation.
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In this book, Nir Eyal explains how products and services can be designed to create habits among users. Through the “Hook Model,” he shows how triggers, rewards, and user behavior can be combined to develop digital solutions that people return to again and again. The book has had a major influence on product development, UX, app design, and digital services.
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Byron Sharp challenges traditional marketing theories and, based on extensive research, shows what actually drives brand growth. He argues that broad availability, mental availability, and continuous presence are often more important than loyalty programs and narrow segmentation alone. The book has become highly influential in modern marketing and brand strategy.
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Ben Horowitz shares candid experiences from leadership, startups, and difficult decision-making in the technology industry. The book explores challenges rarely addressed in traditional leadership literature, such as uncertainty, crises, layoffs, and the pressure of building organizations in rapidly changing environments. Through practical advice and personal experience, Horowitz provides insights into modern leadership, entrepreneurship, and organizational development.
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This article places innovation in a broader societal context. Ahlstrom argues that innovation is not only about economic growth, but also about how businesses contribute to societal development, job creation, and improved living conditions. The perspective is particularly interesting because it shifts the focus of innovation away from technology alone and toward societal value and human development.
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A key book on innovation, creativity, and how new ideas emerge through connections between existing knowledge, people, and technology. Andrew Hargadon challenges the myth of the lone genius and shows how innovation is often created through collaboration, networks, and the ability to combine ideas in new ways.
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One of the most influential books on innovation and technological change. Clayton Christensen explains why established organizations often struggle to respond to disruptive change, even when they are doing “everything right.” The book has had a major influence on innovation, digitalization, and strategic management.
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A follow-up to The Innovator’s Dilemma in which Christensen focuses more on how organizations can strategically approach innovation and disruptive change. The book combines theory with practical guidance on organization, growth, and innovation strategy.
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A key book on what characterizes innovative people and organizations. Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton Christensen explore how observation, curiosity, networking, experimentation, and the ability to ask questions create the foundation for innovation and new ideas.
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In this book, Jonah Berger explains how people are influenced by others—often without even realizing it. Drawing on research in psychology, social influence, and consumer behavior, he shows how our choices, preferences, and decisions are shaped by the people and environments around us. The book provides insight into how social dynamics influence everything from marketing and innovation to digital services and customer experiences.
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Robert Cialdini’s classic book on influence and the psychology of decision-making explains why people say yes—and the mechanisms that influence us in everyday life. Through principles such as social proof, authority, scarcity, and reciprocity, he shows how influence works in marketing, leadership, and interpersonal communication. The book is considered one of the most influential works in psychology and marketing.
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This book shows how the lack of data about women affects design, technology, urban development, healthcare, and decision-making across society. Caroline Criado Perez documents how many products, services, and systems have been developed based on male standards, and why better user understanding and representative data are essential for creating more inclusive solutions. The book has had a major influence on design, technology, the public sector, and societal development.
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A key book from the early eMarketing era, written by Ward Hanson and Kirthi Kalyanam. The book shows how the internet began transforming marketing, CRM, and digital commerce through new digital business models and customer journeys.
This book is considered one of the most important introductions to how the internet began reshaping marketing, customer relationships, and commerce at the dawn of the digital economy. Hanson and Kalyanam combine theory and practice to explain how organizations had to rethink customer data, relationships,
personalization, and digital channels. The book also describes how e-commerce and CRM evolved from technological experiments into essential strategic tools for modern organizations.
The perspectives in the book are particularly interesting today because they reveal the early thinking behind many of the solutions and customer journeys that later became standard in digital commerce and omnichannel strategy.
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