Rolf Nelson's blog, The Rational Entrepreneur has more rigorous content than Paul Graham in the sense that Rolf pays more attention to studies and evidence and so on and has less of Graham's exploratory musings based on personal insight and nostalgia, with the occasional reader ego-stroke. Rolf's content lacks the "ecological credibility" of having personally made a bunch of money off of two successful companies the way Graham has (once is a accident, twice suggests a pattern, the third time confirms the pattern), because Rolf wrote the blog as a way of doing basically what you are doing right now: reading a ton about businesses and startups before jumping in for his first iteration. If you like the blog, you might try contacting Rolf directly as he's an old time OB/LW reader :-)
I am learning as much as possible about effective organizations, specifically large corporations and their respective businesses.
My goals are to start a successful business and to really develop the skills needed to be a great executive.
If any of you on LessWrong have studied this area I would greatly appreciate your input.
My current approach has been to read some highly recommended books and also to read as much as I can about how modern day CEOs and founders start and run their companies. I worry that some of this information is more for entertainment than for obtaining knowledge. I am also starting a company with a friend to try and put a lot of this information into practice.
I've also been using the "execute by default" idea, which, has helped immenseley in actually making progress and I have already felt that practicing this changes the way I approach problems, mostly for the better.
Some books I'm reading:
* Management by Peter Drucker
* The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
* The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman
* The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
* Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston
* How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Some articles I've read:
* Marc Andreesen's articles on starting a company
* Paul Graham's essays on startups
* Most things that are highly voted on on Hacker News
I have found that a lot of the information in these books is very practical, and have really raised my understanding of how large organizations work (at least intellectually). What other approaches should I be taking?
If you have any suggestions on my plan, what I'm reading, or doing, or whatever, please let me know.