Insights
Recommended Reading
We have a learning-oriented culture. We believe that a powerful way to improve MIT’s long-term investment returns is to build what we call “retained learnings” — lessons we have garnered from the books we read, the investors with whom we interact, the mistakes we make, and our frequent debates along MITIMCo’s hallways or during our travels while crammed together in the back of taxicabs.
Here we share an incomplete and unscientific selection of some of our favorite books. We are leaving off an extensive list of investing and business classics that have been formative sources of insight for us. You’ve probably heard of them already! If not, you might enjoy perusing this list.
-
Working: Researching, Interviewing, and Writing
Caro is a world-class historian and writer. We found this memoir highlighting his meticulous approach to research and writing to have many parallels to the curiosity and depth that contribute to successful investing. As Warren Buffett once quipped: “turn every page…”
-
Psychology of Intelligence Analysis
This book was recommended to us by one of our investment partners – as with many of the great reads we’ve enjoyed over the years. Heuer’s framework for building competing alternative hypotheses and seeking disconfirming evidence is a powerful toolkit for sound decision-making.
-
7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy
A former book club selection for one of our global investment staff offsites, this book expanded our mental models for the forms of competitive advantages that great businesses possess. Presented through both theory and business case studies, we find ourselves going back to this one regularly.
-
Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life
Sutherland, a seasoned advertising executive at brand pioneer Ogilvy, explores the psychological – and typically irrational – underpinnings of consumer decision making. Investors often distill observable relationships down to their logical components. This book helped expand our understanding of how experience, perception, and feeling drive customer behavior.
-
Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd
While this book is typically found in the marketing aisle (physical or virtual…), we thought its central message was germane to many areas of investing and business. Youngme Moon’s central insight is that differentiation is the foundation for success, and that differentiation should be bold and distinct, not incremental and constrained by convention. Here’s to being different!
-
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
We are always seeking to improve and evolve, both as individuals and collectively as a team. This book provided us with a highly practical framework for defining what is essential and developing strategies for focusing on what is essential. In a world where the pace and volume of information is accelerating, we took to heart the book’s core message: the disciplined pursuit of less, but better.
-
Investing: The Last Liberal Art
We were initially somewhat skeptical that this was just an attempt by the recovering philosophy major on our team to justify some of the outlandish classes he took, but this book has come to embody our ethic of reading widely to pull the best ideas from a variety of disciplines. We find the latticework of mental models is a powerful lens through which to view the world.
-
The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
An early MITIMCo book club read, this one provoked a lot of thought and discussion around a critical concept in business and investing: disruption. The insights about how well run companies fall behind by doing what seems perfectly rational at the time are intriguing, and it is always important to be reminded of the constant threat of disruption.
-
The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance
We at MITIMCo spend a lot of time trying to identify world class investors (as well as striving to be world class investors ourselves). The mastery of any skill requires a robust, focused learning process – which author Josh Waitzkin deconstructs from his pursuit of world class performance in two very different areas – chess and Tai Chi Chuan. We think we became better learners as a result of this book.
-
Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
We simply love reading about world-class businesses and their leaders. This book has earned a place towards the top of that pile. This history of Pixar has a trove of insights that can be applied to any creative process, from making animated films to investing. We aspire to integrate Pixar’s principles of candidness, creative risk-taking, and exceptional culture into our organization.
-
The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
We have fond memories of our very first book club selection! We don’t invest explicitly from a checklist, but in a complex world, this book helps you to appreciate the need to distill processes down to their essential parts. It’s not about spelling out everything in its infinite details; it is about always getting the right things…well…right.
-
The first one to read the book was so enthusiastic that he bought copies for everyone in the office! We can’t promise you’ll have such a strong reaction, but we certainly agree with the author that happiness and the experience of positive emotion drive better performance, and we enjoyed thinking about ways we can implement the happiness advance at work. It may all seem like common sense, but as the author himself says, “Common sense is not common action.”