Zappos and the New Crown Library: 10/4/2010
I saw Tony Hsieh (builder and CEO of Zappos) speak again this past weekend (he’s awesome if you haven’t seen him — and is traveling around the country on a book / bus tour since selling Zappos for $1.3b to Amazon just recently). He inspired me to do a couple of things with Crown as we continue to evolve and build our business. One of them was to establish a Crown Library (the rest you’ll just have to wait and see).
I plan to order and keep in stock a set of books that I’ve read which has helped to shape my thought process. I’ll only recommend (and stock) books that 1) I’ve read 2) I think are worth sharing and 3) I believe pertinent to business. I’m a fanatic of buying books through Amazon, and was able to go back through all the books I’ve purchased since 2000 and have selected the following as the first stock.
**Crown Library
**
- Breakthrough Company (McFarland)
- Whale Hunting (Searcy)
- No Mans Land (Tatum)
- Dream Manager (Kelly)
- The Dip (Godin)
- The Five Disfunction’s of a Team (Lencioni)
- The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive (Lencioni)
- Getting Naked (Lencioni)
- Nudge (Sunstein)
- Moneyball (Lewis)
- The Design of Business
- The Opposable Mind (Martin)
- Death of a Salesman (Miller)
- Losing My Virginity (Branson)
- The Long Tail (Anderson)
- The Tipping Point (Gladwell)
- Atlas Shrugged (Rand)
- Blink (Gladwell)
- Made to Stick (Heath)
- The Black Swan (Taleb)
- The Origin of Wealth (Beinhocker)
- The Wisdom of Crowds (Suroweicki)
- Liars Poker (Lewis)
- Paradox of Excellence (Mosby)
- Worldly Philosophers (Heilbroner)
- Burn Rate (Wolff)
As I continue to read and find books that inspire me in some way, I’ll notify you and will stock it in the Crown library. For now, the library will be in my office (I have a big, unused shelf that is perfect). Stop by to see what books are there from time to time, and don’t hesitate to take one. My only requirement is that if you take one, you actually read it.
Tony has a new book out: Delivering Happiness. We’ll see if it makes the list (although it will be a bit awkward to take advice from a guy to build a library, when his book doesn’t make the list…!).
Attached is a picture of me and Tony this past weekend when we were able to hang out with him at the bar… Cool guy.
Richard
