Want The Kind Of Success That Google Has? Read What They Read

Another key take-away from speaking at Google‘s CommerceThink ’07 conference that took place at the Googleplex over the past few days, is how much people there read, discuss and challenge some of the most cutting-edge business and current affaires books.

At a conference where you would expect every second word to be either "Facebook" or "YouTube", the title of some key business books kept trumping those other words in multiples.

Here’s what the people at Google are devouring from the bookshelves (I’m happy to report that there are only a few which I have not read, but, thankfully, I do own all of them):

1. The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki.

2. Wikinomics – How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams.

3. The Black Swan – The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

4. The Long Tail – Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson.

5. Super Crunchers – Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart by Ian Ayres.

6. Web Analytics – An Hour a Day by Avinash Kaushik.

7. The Paradox of Choice – Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz.

It’s a brilliant mix of marketing, metrics and mental floss. Even during breaks and at meals people were discussing the books and pushing the concepts forward. If you’re wondering where to start, the buzz seemed to be (for this group) around the book, Less Is More.

Happy reading.