Great Books That Shaped The B-School Elite

DAVID LEVINE

Eugene E. and Catherine M. Trefethen Professor, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley

 

Which book has influenced you the most?

Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom helped me prioritize my work on helping poor kids in poor countries. I understood the importance and opportunity of giving each child in the world the capability to grow into a healthy and productive adult.

What do you plan to read next?

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest because, as the famous rock song says, “Schools’ out for SUMMER!”, and this is exciting summertime reading.

Real books or Kindles and iPads?

Real books, but now I always keep a book or two on my iPad.

Apart from management books, which genres do you like best?

Science fiction

If you are stranded alone on an island which is the one book you would like for company and why?

Complete Works of Shakespeare, because it is long and worth re-reading. I can amuse myself acting out the many parts.

 

NANCY KOEHN

James Robison Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

Which book has influenced you the most?

There are two books that I have been reading for decades now – I must have read them at least 20 times. The King James Bible is one. It has been incredibly influential from several perspectives: spiritual historical and psychological. The second one, Middlemarch by George Eliot, is a large sweeping story about two different individuals. It depicts the arc and the frame of an individual going out on a journey with a very specific plan. Ultimately, it is a story of how they are shaped by that journey. This book presents a fabulous landscape of challenges for everyone who wants to be a better leader. I always keep going back to both these books. In fact, right now I am reading The King James Bible again.

What are you reading now?

I read only a select slice of business books. Right now I am finishing Starbucks founder Howard Schultz and Joanne Gordon’s Onward: How Starbucks Fought for its Life Without Losing Its Soul. While it is a personal account, it is full of ‘signposts’ along the way for leaders and managers of organizations in the midst of turbulence. For instance, one signpost is the idea that you have to establish a culture of transparency of what you are going to do else you end up jeopardizing the business. Another one is on the power of leaders who do not give in, do not give out and do not give up. This is a new bar in the current disruption and dislocation in this new world of business.