[gabrielroth]

Is reading new business books really a necessity? The few that I've read seem pretty vapid. I'm sure there's some useful advice in some of them, but surely an experienced businessperson would already have the basic knowledge and abilities down.

If a top business guy in a startup spent a meaningful amount of time reading new business books, I'd be a bit suspicious.

Your other 'warning signs' seem right on to me.

[trapper]

I would say yes. Thirst for knowledge is a common trait I have noticed amongst the repeatedly successful, and usually manifests itself by having read most of the literature on ones topic.

Perhaps you are overestimating how long it takes to read a business book. Most can be finished in a few hours due to their padding, and reading 10+ new books per year shouldn't be hard even for the uber-busy. It's not like reading a tome on prolog.

[gabrielroth]

I totally agree re: thirst for knowledge. But I'd be more impressed by a business guy who read widely _outside_ his field.

Tangent: one way in which the internet and e-books will definitely affect book publishing, for the better, is that there will be less need to stretch a single idea to book length. Many nonfiction books should really be ~30,000 words long, and once everyone has a Kindle there's no reason for them not to be.

[trapper]

The field of business is very large:

Sales, marketing, accounting, project management, finance, legal, strategy, intellectual property, human resources, presentations, customer development, branding, writing, business planning and more are all topics that good business guys understand well.

Add into that the market specific knowledge (manufacturing, regulations, distribution channels etc) and you have a pretty broad reading list.

Most do have pretty detailed domain specific knowledge from working in that industry in some capacity.

Tangent: Agreed, though hopefully < 30k.

[davidw]

Most of them are very fluffy. Even the good ones, with a unique idea (say, Innovator's Dilemma) have to pad the good stuff to make a book out of it. And hence, a side project of mine, Squeezed Books.