Books of the month

Each month we highlight a book that we think is worth reading because it covers something interesting about innovation or entrepreneurship.

Previous books of the month...

- Blitzscaling: A look at how companies like AirBnB, LinkedIn and Uber grow quickly to capture markets around the world.

- Move Fast and Break Things: A look at the the ethos of rapidly-growing monopolistic web businesses like Amazon, Google and Facebook and why we should be concerned.

- The Attention Merchants: How marketing and advertising has evolved over the years to grab our attention and make money from it.

- Start to Exit: Practical hands-on advice about starting, scaling and exiting your business, authored by the co-founder of the Wyche Innovation Centre.

- The Undercover Economist: A look at the micro-economics of things like coffee in the high street to the macro-economics of countries like Cameroon and China.

- How they started: An interesting summary of how 30 well-known British businesses made it through the startup phase. Includes advice and insight from the entrepreneurs involved in each case.

- The Everything Store: The fascinating story about the rise of Amazon and the how Jeff Bezos weathered the dotcom crash and diversified the business.

- Zero to One: An insight from Peter Thiel (PayPal co-founder and Silicon Valley investor) as to what makes for a great startup and how to grow a globally significant business.

- Elon Musk: Read how an Internet entrepreneur (co-founder of PayPal) has gone on to create Tesla and SpaceX.

- The Joy of Tax: A readable account of how and why we need to tax and how the system could be greatly improved.

- The Innovators: A fascinating read about the history of computing, personal computers and the Internet, from Ada Lovelace through to Google.

- Mastering Bitcoin: A detailed guide to crypto-currencies, the Blockchain revolution, and how these innovations might effect you and the future of e-commerce.

- Money, The Unauthorised Biography: An interesting history of money and capitalism that highlights some of the issues created by our society's current drive towards globalisation:


- Stuff Matters: Materials form the physical fabric of the world around us, and even the seemingly mundane were a result of innovation and unlikely discovery. Read this book and you'll never take your coffee mug or mirror for granted again!

- Future Files: A thought-provoking tour of current trends and possible future scenarios that gives us a glimpse of what living in the future might be like as new innovations and technologies are invented and adopted.

- The Snowball: An interesting biography highlighting what makes one of the world's most successful investors tick. From his humble beginnings, Warren amassed a fortune through prudent and perhaps lucky investment, and people continue to watch his stock picks today.

- The Entrepreneurial State: Mariana argues that government foresight, risk and investment programmes in both the UK and US have been responsible for many of the great innovations that were taken the last mile by commercial companies. An interesting debate!

- Quiet: An interesting book about the differences between introverts and extroverts, and how these different personalities approach learning, problem solving, negotiation and living in general.

- The Other Side of Innovation: Innovating is one thing, but managing the successful execution of innovation-led projects is another, and this book discusses some of the methodology and pitfalls associated with this task.



- What has Nature ever done for us? Many of us forget just how much the natural world around us contributes to our daily lives, and this books looks at how we can put a monetary value on some of the processes that nature undertakes so as to quantify the contribution to our economy.

- Raspberry Pi user guide: Celebrating our new regular Raspberry Jams for students up at the Centre, here's a book to get you started and find out what all the fuss is about.

- Thinking Fast and Slow: A fascinating book by a renowned psychologist on how humans make decisions and are influenced by the situation. Interestingly, there are references in the text where the findings are applied to start-up businesses, recruitment and financial investments.

- A Book about Innocent: A quirky overview about starting the Innocent drinks business, giving an insight into the ethos of the company as it has grown. It also provides useful things to think about when starting a venture and creating a brand.

- The Ascent of Money: A history of capitalism and the development of the various financial instruments we hear a lot about today, with interesting recounts of the mistakes made in the past and how we are beholden once more to the markets and bankers.

- The Facebook Effect: An informative look at the meteoric rise of the biggest social networking company in the world and how it got its corporate foothold in Silicon Valley. If you liked the film The Social Network then this is a good read without the Hollywood glitter.


- Crossing the Chasm: One of the key books that all entrepreneurs and business managers should read to understand the difficulties, issues and possible solutions in taking a new product or service from niche adoption through to the mass-market without going bust in the process.

- Against all Odds: A fascinating insight to the history of Sir James Dyson's vacuum cleaner product and the problems faced as he started out developing, testing and defending his intellectual property and prototypes.

- Four Hour Working Week: Learn how entrepreneur Timothy Ferriss managed his time and inbox to build businesses that pay his way whilst he travels and does things that he really enjoys.

- The Start Up Kit: Useful up-to-date step-by-step guide to starting your business with links to resources that can help you cut costs and cover a lot of ground quickly.

- The Innovation Handbook: Third edition giving practical advice and case studies to stimulate innovation and protect intellectual property from a business perspective.

- The Google Story: A great account of the development and growth of one of the best known and most successful technology companies of the day.

Keep in touch...

Wyche Innovation Centre, Walwyn Road, Malvern WR13 6PL

Email:  info [at] wyche-innovation.com

Tel: +44 (0) 1684 252 152

Subscribe to our newsletter.