100 books like Small Data

By Martin Lindstrom,

Here are 100 books that Small Data fans have personally recommended if you like Small Data. Shepherd is a community of 10,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of How to Win Friends and Influence People

Alex Edmans Author Of Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit

From my list on living with purpose.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a Professor of Finance who specialises in purposeful business and purposeful living. My work on the former shows how companies driven by purpose are ultimately more successful than those driven by profit alone. My interest in the latter stems partly from the former, but also from 20 years of teaching MBA students at MIT, Wharton, and London Business School. While my day job is to teach finance equations, often even more important to my students’ career success and life happiness is living with purpose. There are many self-proclaimed gurus on this topic who shoot from the hip, so I am particularly interested in books based on scientific research.

Alex's book list on living with purpose

Alex Edmans Why did Alex love this book?

Originally published in 1937, this was the original self-improvement book. Carnegie described it as a “practical, working handbook on human relations”.

After reading it, you might think that none of his tips are earth-shatteringly surprising, but you may not have thought of them before reading the book. This is indeed the mark of a great book – something that makes lots of sense after you read it (and so you’re most likely to put it into practice) but you wouldn’t have guessed yourself; and certainly would not have framed it in as clear and convincing manner as Carnegie.

By Dale Carnegie,

Why should I read it?

17 authors picked How to Win Friends and Influence People as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Millions of people around the world have - and continue to - improve their lives based on the teachings of Dale Carnegie. In How to Win Friends and Influence People Carnegie offers practical advice and techniques, in his exuberant and conversational style, for how to get out of a mental rut and make life more rewarding.

His advice has stood the test of time and will teach you how to:
- make friends quickly and easily
- increase your popularity
- win people to your way of thinking
- enable you to win new clients and customers
- become a…


Book cover of Sensemaking: The Power of the Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm

Wayne Moloney Author Of The Wentworth Prospect: A novel guide to success in B2B sales

From my list on B2B salespeople to stay relevant and successful.

Why am I passionate about this?

Everyone survives by selling something whether we wear the title or not. Selling has been my career, even before I was a salesperson. I started my career in engineering but quickly realised my passion was in developing business, not designing industrial ventilation systems. Helped by a boss who also saw I was better suited to roles other than engineering (he wasn’t so polite) I went on to enjoy a successful career spanning 4 decades working in Australian, Asian, and European markets that embraced all facets of sales and business development. Helped by great mentors and learning from the experience of others, I have endeavoured to give back by mentoring business owners, salespeople, and writing.

Wayne's book list on B2B salespeople to stay relevant and successful

Wayne Moloney Why did Wayne love this book?

The internet delivers us a tsunami of information. Approximately 328.77 million terabytes of data are created each day – 60 times more than in 2010 and estimated to grow at 20% per year.

How can we make sense of this? What is valuable and what is not? What is real, what is fake?

Mardsbjerg argues that our fixation with data makes us lose touch with reality and that we need to be making sense of the world through deep, nuanced engagement with culture, language, and history.

By Christian Madsbjerg,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Sensemaking as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A FINANCIAL TIMES BUSINESS BOOK OF THE MONTH (APRIL 2017) Humans have become subservient to algorithms. Every day brings a new Moneyball fix - a maths whiz who will crack open an industry with clean fact-based analysis rather than human intuition and experience. As a result, we have stopped thinking. Machines do it for us. Christian Madsbjerg argues that our fixation with data often masks stunning deficiencies, and the risks for humankind are enormous. Blind devotion to number crunching imperils our businesses, our educations, our governments, and our life savings. Too many companies have lost touch with the humanity of…


Book cover of The Art of War for Executives: Ancient Knowledge for Today's Business Professional

Wayne Moloney Author Of The Wentworth Prospect: A novel guide to success in B2B sales

From my list on B2B salespeople to stay relevant and successful.

Why am I passionate about this?

Everyone survives by selling something whether we wear the title or not. Selling has been my career, even before I was a salesperson. I started my career in engineering but quickly realised my passion was in developing business, not designing industrial ventilation systems. Helped by a boss who also saw I was better suited to roles other than engineering (he wasn’t so polite) I went on to enjoy a successful career spanning 4 decades working in Australian, Asian, and European markets that embraced all facets of sales and business development. Helped by great mentors and learning from the experience of others, I have endeavoured to give back by mentoring business owners, salespeople, and writing.

Wayne's book list on B2B salespeople to stay relevant and successful

Wayne Moloney Why did Wayne love this book?

Sun Tzu’s classic text, The Art of War has been a ‘go-to’ handbook for scholars, politicians, and military leaders for centuries.

In more recent times, politicians, entrepreneurs, business leaders, and sports coaches have turned to this classic for invaluable commentary and guidance of strategy, leadership, competition, cooperation, and organisation.

Krause puts Sun Tzu’s concepts in context with the business world to save the reader having to ‘translate’ the instructions on how to wage war to how to conduct business successfully.

By Donald G. Krause,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Art of War for Executives as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

For years, business schools and professional consultants have turned to Sun Tzu's 2500-year-old Chinese text for its useful commentary on such topics as leadership, strategy, organization, competition and co-operation. The wisdom of Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" is now made accessible to the modern reader. Not simply a new translation, this book provides an easy-to-follow interpretation of the classic document. It reveals the brilliance of Sun Tzu, and shows how to win on the battlefield of modern business. The tone and insight of the original classic remain, whilst incorporating the ideas of contemporary business philosophers, such as Peters, Drucker…


Book cover of The Yes Syndrome: A Complete Guide to Selling Professionally

Wayne Moloney Author Of The Wentworth Prospect: A novel guide to success in B2B sales

From my list on B2B salespeople to stay relevant and successful.

Why am I passionate about this?

Everyone survives by selling something whether we wear the title or not. Selling has been my career, even before I was a salesperson. I started my career in engineering but quickly realised my passion was in developing business, not designing industrial ventilation systems. Helped by a boss who also saw I was better suited to roles other than engineering (he wasn’t so polite) I went on to enjoy a successful career spanning 4 decades working in Australian, Asian, and European markets that embraced all facets of sales and business development. Helped by great mentors and learning from the experience of others, I have endeavoured to give back by mentoring business owners, salespeople, and writing.

Wayne's book list on B2B salespeople to stay relevant and successful

Wayne Moloney Why did Wayne love this book?

The YES Syndrome could have been written yesterday.

But it was first published in 1982. Proof that the basics of good selling are not new, but have been the foundation of successful, ethical selling for decades, if not longer.

Combine the timeless customer-focused sales skills that Beveridge shares with the emerging technologies of the 21st century and salespeople will not only remain relevant, but indispensable and invaluable to buyers.

By Don Beveridge,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Yes Syndrome as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'The YES Syndrome' is much more than simplistic selling techniques or more "HOW-TO." It is a unique, complete system, from the initial "customer needs analysis" through to the sophisticated 'customer focused proposal.' These systems work. They have been proven and Don Beveridge's concepts have been embraced by corporated America.


Book cover of The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads

Keith L. Downing Author Of Gradient Expectations: Structure, Origins, and Synthesis of Predictive Neural Networks

From my list on to keep an AI researcher awake at night.

Why am I passionate about this?

I've been working in the field of AI for 40 years, first in graduate school and then as a professor. For the most part, I have had my head in the sand, focusing on the minutiae that occasionally lead to publications, the coins of the academic realm. When deep learning started exhibiting human-level pattern recognition abilities, the number of AI books for the general public began to swell.  Unfortunately, the science-fiction scenarios were a bit much. Since understanding, recognizing, and admitting problems are vital steps toward a solution, I find these books to be the most important warnings of the impending tech-dominated future.

Keith's book list on to keep an AI researcher awake at night

Keith L. Downing Why did Keith love this book?

Although it is now a well-known fact that many actors are fighting for our online attention, and will do just about anything to get and keep it, Wu puts it all in historical perspective by going back to the 1800’s and the beginning of print advertising. 

He then traces our relationships with ads across a century and four screens: movies, television, home computers, and finally the cell phone. For the same reason that I enjoy reading history books to try to make some sense of the world’s current political chaos, this masterpiece by Wu should ensure you that nothing about human greed has changed in any major way: the tools of exploitation just get more powerful and more addictive.

By Tim Wu,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked The Attention Merchants as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Attention merchant: an industrial-scale harvester of human attention. A firm whose business model is the mass capture of attention for resale to advertisers.
In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of advertising enticements, branding efforts, sponsored social media, commercials and other efforts to harvest our attention. Over the last century, few times or spaces have remained uncultivated by the 'attention merchants', contributing to the distracted, unfocused tenor of our times. Tim Wu argues that this is not simply the byproduct of recent inventions but the end result of more than a century's growth and expansion…


Book cover of Reach: Create the Biggest Possible Audience for Your Message, Book, or Cause

Jacqueline Jeynes Author Of Managing Health & Safety in a Small Business

From my list on managing a small business, including risks and boring bits.

Why am I passionate about this?

Mentioning health and safety is a great turn-off at parties when someone asks what you do for a living! Starting my training company 30 years ago, and later representing UK small business, it also became clear that we needed a practical, hands-on approach not a theoretical framework to ensure the safety and health of workers. Having five sons of my own (yes, really) gave even more reason to ensure people understood risk assessment, so my first book was published. Twenty years later, I am still writing non-fiction books and passionate about health and safety.

Jacqueline's book list on managing a small business, including risks and boring bits

Jacqueline Jeynes Why did Jacqueline love this book?

We all know how important it is to reach the target audience for your product or service, whatever business sector you operate in, so as an author, this is particularly relevant for me.

The good thing about the book is that it does not just focus on having an online presence but confirms the need to ensure you have offline presence too. 

It is a practical approach based around four steps to creating your brand and the strategy to reach the audience, with examples of how the suggested strategies work. It is a realistic discussion about techniques we need to use today in order to reach the widest possible audience. I shall be trying the four steps out for myself! 

By Becky Robinson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Reach as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Cut through the noise and create the biggest possible audience for your work. This book offers a proven method for expanding your reach online so you can make a meaningful difference for others.

Anyone who makes the bold decision to put their ideas out into the world wants to reach as many people as possible. Unfortunately, too many think it’s a question of numbers—the more people you can get in front of, the better. But true reach is about expanding your audience while making a meaningful and enduring difference that has a lasting impact.

Reach provides a clear and structured…


Book cover of Brand Hijack: Marketing Without Marketing

Jason Falls Author Of Winfluence: Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand

From my list on word of mouth marketing.

Why am I passionate about this?

Jason Falls is an award-winning marketing strategist, author of three books, and host of two marketing-related podcasts. He has been listed as one of the most influential voices in the world of social media and influencer marketing.

Jason's book list on word of mouth marketing

Jason Falls Why did Jason love this book?

This was the book that inspired me to switch careers. Wipperfürth details the rise of brands like Doc Martens, Napster and Pabst Blue Ribbon, all of which were WOM success stories. But he did so before the practice of word-of-mouth was openly practiced and promoted by agencies and consultants around the world. Still, you can see the brilliance behind the power of turning your brand over to your customers and how engineering that can happen.

By Alex Wipperfürth,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Brand Hijack as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A guide to successful branding without typical marketing practices introduces the concept of consumer-driven, or word-of-mouth, branding, in a practical guide that addresses such challenges as media saturation, consumer evolution, and the erosion of image marketing. 50,000 first printing.


Book cover of Decoding the New Consumer Mind: How and Why We Shop and Buy

Marty Neumeier Author Of The Brand Gap

From my list on brand strategy.

Why am I passionate about this?

In my younger days I was a graphic designer and copywriter, approaching brands largely from a creative viewpoint. Over the years I’ve discovered that creative work is much more powerful when harnessed to business strategy, and business strategy is much more powerful when combined with exceptional creative work. I’ve characterized the gulf between strategy and creativity as the “brand gap,” which has led to eight books on branding and a school for professional mastery called Level C.

Marty's book list on brand strategy

Marty Neumeier Why did Marty love this book?

Marketing psychologist Kit Yarrow explains how technology has rewired our brains, making us more individualistic, isolated, emotional, and distrustful. This is not a pessimistic book—it’s a practical guide to addressing customers’ desires and insecurities in a time of deep cultural shifts. Not only has she done her homework, but she also presents the results with lightness and clarity.

By Kit Yarrow,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Decoding the New Consumer Mind as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Take a glimpse into the mind of the modern consumer A decade of swift and stunning change has profoundly affected the psychology of how, when, and why we shop and buy. In Decoding the New Consumer Mind, award-winning consumer psychologist Kit Yarrow shares surprising insights about the new motivations and behaviors of shoppers, taking marketers where they need to be today: into the deeply psychological and often unconscious relationships that people have with products, retailers, marketing communications, and brands. Drawing on hundreds of consumer interviews and shop-alongs, Yarrow reveals the trends that define our transformed behavior. For example, when we…


Book cover of Consumer Tribes

Chris Buckingham Author Of Business Planning for Games

From my list on translating your great ideas into a winning games business.

Why am I passionate about this?

Games and playing have always played a part of my life. I have created games and businesses and been fortunate enough to have worked with both at various levels as a mentor and guide. For me, this is the gift that keeps giving. The tee-shirt wearing creatives and the suit folk with their business acumen we seek to help scale our ideas. I have worked for years at the nexus of these tribes, and still find it a thrill to learn about the visions people have for the wonderful world of games and play and the oblique outcomes we couldn’t have predicted.

Chris' book list on translating your great ideas into a winning games business

Chris Buckingham Why did Chris love this book?

This book covers an often-overlooked aspect of finding a market and customers, users, or players for your game.

Tribes are the drivers of the traction you will need on social media and the impact your vision will have on your community. I love the case studies in this book, covering a global stage of BDSM through to the British Royal Family.

This book taught me the value of nurturing and caring for the diverse communities we serve.

By Bernard Cova, Robert Kozinets, Avi Shankar

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Consumer Tribes as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Marketing and consumer research has traditionally conceptualized consumers as individuals- who exercise choice in the marketplace as individuals not as a class or a group. However an important new perspective is now emerging that rejects the individualistic view and focuses on the reality that human life is essentially social, and that who we are is an inherently social phenomenon. It is the tribus, the many little groups we belong to, that are fundamental to our experience of life. Tribal Marketing shows that it is not individual consumption of products that defines our lives but rather that this activity actually facilitates…


Book cover of Consumer Behavior

Frank R. Kardes Author Of Handbook of Research Methods in Consumer Psychology

From my list on consumer psychology.

Why am I passionate about this?

Frank R. Kardes, Ph.D. is the Donald E. Weston Professor of Marketing and Distinguished Research Professor at the Lindner College of Business at the University of Cincinnati. He is a recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award of the Society for Consumer Psychology, and a Fellow of five national professional societies. His research focuses on omission neglect, consumer judgment, and inference processes, persuasion and advertising, and consumer and managerial decision making. He was Co-Editor of Advances in Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, the Handbook of Consumer Psychology, and Marketing Letters, and serves or has served on seven editorial boards. He has published nine books and over 100 articles and chapters on consumer psychology.

Frank's book list on consumer psychology

Frank R. Kardes Why did Frank love this book?

This textbook is scientifically grounded but highly readable. This book offers an information-processing perspective to help us get inside the head of the consumer and to understand how attention, memory, judgment, and inference processes operate in concert to influence consumer decision making. Consumers are frequently unaware of these influences on their thinking and reasoning.

By Maria Cronley, Thomas Cline, Frank R. Kardes

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Consumer Behavior as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This wide-ranging yet focused text provides an informative introduction to consumer behavior supported by in-depth, scientifically grounded coverage of key principles and applications.

CONSUMER BEHAVIOR, Second Edition, devotes ample attention to "classic" consumer behavior topics, including consumer information processing, consumer decision making, persuasion, social media and the role of culture and society on consumer behavior. In addition, this innovative text explores important current topics and trends relevant to modern consumer behavior, such as international and ethical perspectives, an examination of contemporary media, and a discussion of online tactics and branding strategies. This versatile text strikes an ideal balance among theoretical…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in consumer behaviour, marketing, and branding?

10,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them. Browse their picks for the best books about consumer behaviour, marketing, and branding.

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