10 Business Books In 2010

These are the 10 business books published in 2010, that I would recommend you to read. Originally, I wrote this on Quora, in response to "What are must read business books of 2010?". Yes, I have read all of them, and no, they are not in any specific order.

1) What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell

I am a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell and his style. This is a compilation of his "The New Yorker" stories. Even though the articles are available on his website, this book makes it a great read.

2) Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky

The next time someone asks you how come people have so much time to blog, answer questions on Quora, or contribute to Wikipedia, ask them to read this book.

3) The Big Short by Michael Lewis

Want to know all about CDO and subprime mortgage and still be entertained? This is the book. Michael Lewis has great storytelling skills that makes serious and complex topics fun to read. I like this book as much as I liked Moneyball - http://amzn.to/b9YPx9

4) Open Leadership by Charlene Li

If you liked Groundswell - http://amzn.to/c8faH5 - you will like this as well. If you are interested in organizational transformation through social media, this will make a great read. Social media adoption can certainly make the leaders more credible, open, and transparent. Being a social media freak and an enterprise 2.0 strategist, I loved this book.

5) Engage by Brian Solis

This book is Seth Godin meet Social Media. It's a must-read if you are a marketer, trying to understand the impact of social media on your brand and working on engaging your customers using social media. Brian Solis has a fluid style with a lot of relevant examples.

6) The New Polymath by Vinnie Mirchandani

Vinnie is a great enterprise software analyst and a prolific blogger. I closely follow his work. This is an upbeat book that will excite the technologists as well as the business folks. If you think you have a stretch goal and want to change the world, this book will further stretch your stretch goals, and will give you a reason and purpose, to get out of bed every morning and run for it.

7) Rework by Jason Fried

I have followed 37Signals and Jason's blog. This book puts everything together with illustrations and a simple style making it easy to read, just like 37Signals. If you are itching to be an entrepreneur, this might make you take that leap. If you're starting out and want inspiration and design principles, this is the book. All design is re-design and so is this book.

8) The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick

Some watch the movie, I prefer to read a book. The book is more accurate than the movie. Well, duh. David is a great writer, and he used the access that he had to Zuckerberg and Facebook, to produce a great book. It's quite insightful.

9) Gamestorming by Dave Gray

I love XPLANE. They do a great job and now they are part of Dachis group where I am expecting them to do even better. It's incredibly difficult to take complex concepts and simplify to communicate to any audience. The book outlines great approaches to accomplish the simplicity and facilitate learning, discovery, and decision making.

10) Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh

Zappos is a great company. I have learned a lot from its culture and from Tony's management style. This is a must-read, if you believe you want to excel in serving your customers and have your entire team live by those values.

And this is the first 2011 book that you may want to read:

The Capitalist Manifesto by Umair Haque

Knowing Umair, this will be a great book.