CEO Essential Reading
Discover the must-read books every CEO needs for leadership, strategy, and success. Elevate your executive skills with these essential reads.
Book
The Prince
by Niccolo Machiavelli
Here is the world's most famous master plan for seizing and holding power. Astonishing in its candor The Prince even today remains a disturbingly realistic and prophetic work on what it takes to be a prince . . . a king . . . a president. When, in 1512, Machiavelli was removed from his post in his beloved Florence, he resolved to set down a treatise on leadership that was practical, not idealistic. In The Prince he envisioned would be unencumbered by ordinary ethical and moral values; his prince would be man and beast, fox and lion. Today, this small sixteenth-century masterpiece has become essential reading for every student of government, and is the ultimate book on power politics.
Book
As the Future Catches You
by Juan Enriquez
You will never look at the world in the same way after reading As the Future Catches You. Juan Enriquez puts you face to face with a series of unprecedented political, ethical, economic, and financial issues, dramatically demonstrating the cascading impact of the genetic, digital, and knowledge revolutions on your life. Genetics will be the dominant language of this century. Those who can "speak it" will acquire direct and deliberate control over all forms of life. But most countries and individuals remain illiterate in what is rapidly becoming the greatest single driver of the global economy. Wealth will be more concentrated and those with knowledge to sell-both countries and individuals-will be the winners. Consider what will happen when: - Your genetic code can be digitally imprinted on an ID card and your insurance company and employer see that you are genetically disposed to, say, heart disease. - Pharmaceutical products are developed so that you can eat genetically modified broccoli to protect yourself from cancer. - Cloning will be as common as in vitro fertilization and scientists can influence the genetic design not only of other species but of your own children. - Creating wealth no longer requires many hands. Lone individuals are giving birth to entire new industries that rapidly become bigger than the economies of most countries on earth, but create very few jobs. As the Future Catches You resembles no other book. A typical page may contain just a few dozen words. But each seemingly discrete fact is like a chip in an intellectual mosaic that reveals its meaning and beauty only as you step back and see the big picture. Juan Enriquez is like thebest teacher you ever had, one who helps you to see something in a new light and makes you say, "Now I get it!" Juan Enriquez's main point is that technology is not kind, it does not say "please," but slams into existing systems and destroys them while creating new ones. Countries and individuals can either surf new and powerful waves of change-or get crushed trying to stop them. The future is catching us all. Let it catch you with your eyes wide open.
