10 books like The Experience Economy

By B Joseph Pine II, James H Gilmore,

Here are 10 books that authors have personally recommended if you like The Experience Economy. Shepherd is a community of 7,000+ authors sharing their favorite books with the world.

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The Fred Factor

By Mark Sanborn,

Book cover of The Fred Factor: How Passion in Your Work and Life Can Turn the Ordinary Into the Extraordinary

If only my mail carrier were like Fred… but that’s the point. All of us can “up our game” when it comes to caring for and about others. Mark Sanborn crafted a highly accessible and engaging book that shows how everyone can “be a Fred.” The line between ordinary and extraordinary is less about resources and more about focus and effort.

The Fred Factor

By Mark Sanborn,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Mark Sanborn met his postman, Fred, just after he moved to Denver. Fred knocked on his door, introduced himself and welcomed him to the neighbourhood. He also asked Sanborn abou8t himself and how he wanted his mail handled while he was away. Needless to say, Sanborn was shocked. He asked Fred more about his job and how he approached it. Fred's answers inspired him to develop motivational seminars promoting Fred's attitude and approach to life. To embody the Fred philosophy is to realise and practise that:--Everyone can make a difference--Success is built on good relationships--You must continually create value for…


Pour Your Heart Into It

By Howard Schultz,

Book cover of Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time

This book is by the founder of a company that has successfully navigated the stages of growth from a start-up to a sustainably successful organization and become a global champion or recognized leader in its space. Accordingly, the book is from the “horse’s mouth.” Schultz and his coauthor take the reader on the journey of the development of one of the classic entrepreneurial successes of our time. He details the challenges, his thinking, and the responses that were made to create the Starbucks of today. The book provided s the reader with a rare opportunity to participate in the Starbucks journey from a vision to the reality of building a great company. 

Pour Your Heart Into It

By Howard Schultz,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Pour Your Heart Into It as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Pour Your Heart Into It, former CEO and now chairman emeritus Howard Schultz illustrates the principles that have shaped the Starbucks phenomenon, sharing the wisdom he has gained from his quest to make great coffee part of the American experience.

The success of Starbucks Coffee Company is one of the most amazing business stories in decades. What started as a single store on Seattle's waterfront has grown into the largest coffee chain on the planet. Just as remarkable as this incredible growth is the fact that Starbucks has managed to maintain its renowned commitment to product excellence and employee…


Peak

By Chip Conley,

Book cover of Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow

I wish I had written this book. Chip Conley takes Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and applies it to employees and customers. Sharing lessons from hotel leadership, Chip demonstrates how managers and frontline workers should prioritize primary needs of those they serve while stretching to address higher level belonging and self-expression needs. With precision and clarity, Chip Conley offers a template for assessing the wants, needs, and desires of others

Peak

By Chip Conley,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Proven principles for sustainable success, with new leadership insight

PEAK is the popular, transformative guide to doing business better, written by a seasoned entrepreneur/CEO who has disrupted his favorite industry not once, but twice. Author Chip Conley, founder and former CEO of one of the world's largest boutique hotel companies, turned to psychologist Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs at a time when his company was in dire need. And years later, when the young founders of Airbnb asked him to help turn their start-up home sharing company into a world-class hospitality giant, Conley once again used the principles he'd developed…


Delivering Happiness

By Tony Hsieh,

Book cover of Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

It was a tough decision, and I definitely still want you to read Seth Godin’s books, but I settled on the late Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness since great company culture is the foundation to an admired brand. I strongly believe in that and spreading how Tony created the phenomenon that is the Zappos culture, you will realize that paying your top employees hard cash to quit is actually one of the many ways to set your company on the path of becoming an admired brand.

Delivering Happiness

By Tony Hsieh,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Delivering Happiness as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

- Pay brand-new employees $2,000 to quit
- Make customer service the responsibility of the entire company-not just a department
- Focus on company culture as the #1 priority
- Apply research from the science of happiness to running a business
- Help employees grow-both personally and professionally
- Seek to change the world
- Oh, and make money too . . .

Sound crazy? It's all standard operating procedure at Zappos, the online retailer that's doing over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales annually. After debuting as the highest-ranking newcomer in Fortune magazine's annual "Best Companies to Work For"…


Raving Fans

By Ken Blanchard, Sheldon Bowles,

Book cover of Raving Fans

This is another book that uses the business fable motif. But within the storyline, you'll find a boatload of insights as to what a leader and a team needs to understand regarding the difference between producing a superior product and producing raving fans - - which is something that I've found most leaders and teams fail to intuitively grasp.

Raving Fans

By Ken Blanchard, Sheldon Bowles,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

With a new foreword by Ken Blanchard

A straightforward and snappy guide to successful customer service from the author of the bestselling The One Minute Manager.

Raving Fans, in a nutshell, is the advice given to a new Area Manager on his first day - in an extraordinary business book that will help everyone, in every kind of organisation or business, deliver stunning customer service and achieve miraculous bottom-line results.

Raving Fans is written in the parable style of The One Minute Manager and uses a brilliantly simple and charming story to teach how to define a vision, learn what…


The Innovator's Dilemma

By Clayton M. Christensen,

Book cover of The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail

I hate the way people toss around the term, disruption, to describe everything under the sun, neutering the value of the term in describing why disruption matters. Christensen’s book relies on empirical research, not hyperbole, to describe what makes innovations disruptive and why many companies fail to respond to disruptive innovations. I use the book and a series of Harvard Business Review articles co-authored by Christensen in one of my classes as a way to help my students understand the unique challenges of marketing disruptive innovations. Inevitably, the students who resist the concepts the most are the ones who write several years after graduation about how they are seeing Christensen’s concepts playing out in their markets. 

The Innovator's Dilemma

By Clayton M. Christensen,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Innovator's Dilemma as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Named one of 100 Leadership & Success Books to Read in a Lifetime by Amazon Editors A Wall Street Journal and Businessweek bestseller. Named by Fast Company as one of the most influential leadership books in its Leadership Hall of Fame. An innovation classic. From Steve Jobs to Jeff Bezos, Clay Christensen's work continues to underpin today's most innovative leaders and organizations. The bestselling classic on disruptive innovation, by renowned author Clayton M. Christensen. His work is cited by the world's best-known thought leaders, from Steve Jobs to Malcolm Gladwell. In this classic bestseller--one of the most influential business books…


Reaching the Goal

By John Arthur Ricketts,

Book cover of Reaching the Goal: How Managers Improve a Services Business Using Goldratt's Theory of Constraints

Of course, when I started to apply the insights from "Critical Chain" over and over again in different companies, not everything always went smoothly. That was frustrating—for me and the people I worked with. Every company—or rather, every business—has its own idiosyncrasies. Understanding that and being able to take it into account when accelerating an entire project portfolio was crucial. Reading Reaching the Goal helped me a lot in this. Ricketts writes from his many years of experience at IBM.

Reaching the Goal

By John Arthur Ricketts,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

"There is no doubt that this is a truly original and groundbreaking work in applying the Theory of Constraints. I run a services company and learned some things about the services business. Anyone involved in large services companies needs to look at what John is proposing. I will definitely quote this material frequently."

ChadSmith, Managing Partner, Constraints Management Group

"The information presented in this book is badly needed by service providers who struggle to balance supply and demand with their resources."

Carol A. Ptak, CFPIM, CIRM

"The techniques that John brings to light in this book are the bridge from…


Excellence Wins

By Horst Schulze, Dean Merrill,

Book cover of Excellence Wins: A No-Nonsense Guide to Becoming the Best in a World of Compromise

Horst Schulze started as a bellboy and became the best hotelier in the world. He is the one who created the leading hotel chain Ritz Carlton. He won the Baldridge Quality Award twice. No one else has achieved that. But what's really interesting about this book is not the result, but the way he got there: how did he achieve this great goal? 

Anyone involved in service can learn extremely valuable lessons from this book. And in the process, you will also get to know Horst Schulze as a person. Because at the core of him lies the secret of success; he is a role model and leader.

Excellence Wins

By Horst Schulze, Dean Merrill,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Horst Schulze knows what it takes to win. In Excellence Wins, the cofounder and former president of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company lays out a blueprint for becoming the very best in a world of compromise. In his characteristic no-nonsense approach, Schulze shares the visionary and disruptive principles that have led to immense global success over the course of his still-prolific fifty-year career in the hospitality industry.

For over twenty years, Schulze fearlessly led the company to unprecedented multibillion dollar growth, setting the business vision and people-focused standards that made the Ritz-Carlton brand world renowned. In Excellence Wins, Schulze shares his…


The Innovator's Solution

By Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor,

Book cover of The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth

After Positioning, this is the most influential book in brand innovation. The authors show how scrappy startups can disrupt incumbents with products and services that seem “not good enough” at first, but end up reordering an entire industry. They also show how incumbents can defend against such aggressive moves. A seminal work.

The Innovator's Solution

By Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Innovator's Solution as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An innovation classic. From Steve Jobs to Jeff Bezos, Clay Christensen's work continues to underpin today's most innovative leaders and organizations. A seminal work on disruption--for everyone confronting the growth paradox. For readers of the bestselling The Innovator's Dilemma--and beyond--this definitive work will help anyone trying to transform their business right now. In The Innovator's Solution, Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor expand on the idea of disruption, explaining how companies can and should become disruptors themselves. This classic work shows just how timely and relevant these ideas continue to be in today's hyper-accelerated business environment. Christensen and Raynor give advice…


I'll Be Back

By Shep Hyken,

Book cover of I'll Be Back

If you’re looking for a book on customer service or customer experience, you have to read one of Shep Hyken’s books! Shep is the world’s top customer service expert, a hall-of-fame speaker, and one of my biggest mentors (you could say I’m his superfan!). His most recent book, I’ll Be Back is my personal favorite of his because of its focus on the organizational culture that’s needed to drive a customer-centric brand. 

I'll Be Back

By Shep Hyken,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked I'll Be Back as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

How do you build a business that thrives during good times and bad? Is there a strategy that can set up  your company up for success, no matter what curveballs the world may throw your way? There is: Turn customers into repeat customers, and turn repeat customers into loyal customers.
 
Renowned customer service and experience expert Shep Hyken maintains that delivering an amazing customer service experience that keeps customers coming back for more is everyone’s job. Customer service is not a department. It’s not just for people on the front lines. It’s the responsibility of everyone in the organization, from…


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