The 10 best books to develop your business

What are business books for? There are as many answers as there are entrepreneurs. Some business books offer direct, practical advice, going into the nitty-gritty of running a business and its employees. Others, for their part, have an inspirational scope, recounting the biography of their authors. Still others, which do not necessarily appear to ordinary mortals as business books, will be perceived as such by readers with an entrepreneurial spirit, who will find there useful life lessons for practicing their profession.

We asked six business founders – from businesses as diverse as skincare and fitness fashion to resurrecting the woolly mammoth – to tell us about their favorite business books. Some answers were predictable, others much less so. So if you're thinking about starting your own business, or you're just curious about what entrepreneurs are eyeing, this article is for you.

Advice from Ben Massey, founder of fitness brand RAD

Legacy: Secrets of the All Blacks – 15 leadership lessons by James Kerr

The New Zealand All Blacks are the best rugby team of all time; Legacy presents the working method they developed to achieve this. The book focuses on the question of “doing well”: everyone gets involved in all tasks, even the most menial. One of the chapters is actually called “Sweeping the Locker Rooms” – the end of training does not mean that the athletes are done for the day. They must ensure that the locker room is spotless before leaving. The big lesson we learn is that we must always do well, even if no one is there to see us. And I think that in business, that's something that we've lost – people are chasing success or margins, that sort of thing.

Confessions of an entrepreneur…like no other by Yvon Chouinard

Wise advice from the founder of Patagonia for building a truly good corporate culture. Or how he thought about building his company from the inside, and how he managed to bring together a collective of people who shared the same values, by defending them himself in his functions. This book influenced me a lot – I drew this analogy from it that I always come back to: if a company were a human being, how would I want that human being to behave?

Advice from Andy Aitken, co-founder of Honest, a mobile phone network with a reduced carbon footprint

L'Art subtil de s'en f*utre by Mark Manson

A very good book to listen to (or not listen to). When we start a business, we invariably find people who will try to dissuade us. We will meet millions of people who will disagree with us, and that's absolutely okay. Life is much better when we stop worrying about people who don't approve of what we do or disagree with us.

Advice from Ben Lamm, entrepreneur and co-founder of Colossal, a biotechnology company that aims to bring extinct species, such as the woolly mammoth, back to life

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Clearly one of the greatest works of fiction ever written, and the only one to reveal the true secret of the universe. It is interesting for entrepreneurs, in that it evokes the loneliness we feel in the face of the destruction of the planet, and sets out major laws on how to lead men in times of crisis. First lesson: don't panic.

Petit Larousse illustrated with legends and myths de Philip Wilkinson

We have forgotten everything about the ancient world. This book gives us an excellent starting point to dive back into it: there are stories that stimulate the imagination, illustrations that shake up our ideas, and ideas that lead us to big questions – so many tools that I I find it very useful when I'm trying to look at a problem from another angle, or trying to come up with ideas for creating a new project.

Spoon River d’Edgar Lee Masters

I always recommend this book, it's as weird as it is cool. This series of short poems tells the collective story of the lives of the residents of Spoon River, a small fictional town. A real masterclass if you want to learn to do things differently, and a good demonstration that any story, any idea can take lots of different forms. This text reminds me that there are infinite ways to do even the simplest things – an invaluable lesson in both business and leadership.

Advice from James Uffindell, founder of Bright Network, which connects students and employers

Sapiens de Yuval Noah Harari

This book, which made Yuval Noah Harari known, and which he himself describes as a “history of the human being”, combines multiple fields – history, economics, finance, etc. – in order to help the reader understand where wise man what motivates us and where we can go; crucial themes for anyone starting a business. Running a business is all about caring about others, and if you want to understand others better, this book will help you.

Advice from Laura Harnett, founder of the ecological cleaning brand Seep

The Trillion Dollar Coach d’Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg et Alan Eagle

I love this book because it shows how Google, Apple and other big tech companies worked hand in hand with their teams to achieve crucial stages of their development. It's a great read to understand how to build a team, and how to motivate different individuals.

Advice from Natalie James, founder of the skincare brand helloSKIN

The Art of Victory – Autobiography of the Founder of NIKE de Phil Knight

Lire The art of victory has a particular resonance when one has oneselfehI created my own business. Phil Knight doesn't give us a smooth version of his story here, he gives us the reality: worrying about paying salaries, juggling payments to suppliers, and wondering if it will all end up blowing up. Most business books suggest that you just need to have a great plan, but Phil Knight shows that he was just winging it, like most of us – me anyway! Reading about someone who went through the same chaos as you, and built such a legendary brand keeps me going.

What you'll never learn at Harvard de Mark McCormack

What type did IMG build [agence d’athlètes et de célébrités] from A to Z and he reveals in his book all the truth about how we do business in the field. What I love is that where Harvard looks at case studies, Mark McCormack gives tips for assessing a situation when no one is looking you in the eye during a negotiation, or explains to you why that slight silence on the other end of the line means your customer is about to walk out the door. As an entrepreneur, it's these subtle details of human dynamics – the kind of details you don't learn from a PowerPoint – that I need to go further.

Originally published on British GQ