6 fiction novels top tech leaders love to read

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A serious entrepreneur must only read about the world order, or latest scientific discoveries, or management skills, right?

Wrong.

As it goes, top tech and startup leaders across the world read as much fiction as other things, and with good reason. Fiction has been known to improve social skills, enhance connectivity in the brain and improve brain function. And as any serious book lover will tell you, quality works of fiction are often more than “just stories”. They roll discourses on philosophy, economics, management, and character studies within their covers – traits and skills every entrepreneur must imbibe in order to survive.

Here’s a list of six works of fiction top entrepreneurs count as their favorites. The list is obviously not all-encompassing, but an indication of what sings to the uber successful.

1. Elon Musk – The Lord of the Rings

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When people ask Musk how he learnt to build rockets, he says its by reading books. At the top of his list is Tolkien’s tome of fantasy adventure, which has smitten generations since its first publication in 1954. A New Yorker profile of the Tesla and SpaceX CEO said that at he was picked on a lot during his childhood. Fantasy (J.R.R. Tolkien) and science fiction (Isaac Asimov) would help him cope.

“The heroes of the books I read always felt a duty to save the world,” he said.

2. Steve Jobs- 1984

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Even five years after his death, Jobs continues to be regarded as of the most inspiring and visionary tech leaders the world has ever seen. His pick? 1984 by George Orwell.

The book is even said to have inspired the famous Apple “1984” Super Bowl commercial that preannounced the Macintosh.

1984 is a dystopian story of one man’s fight against a state that wants to control everyone’s thoughts and behaviors. Many of its terms and concepts, such as Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, 2 + 2 = 5, and memory hole have entered our daily vocabulary since its publication in 1949.

Incidentally, one of Zuckerberg’s favorites is a Orwell’s Revenge by Peter Huber – a spin-off of 1984 in which citizens use technology that once enslaved them to set themselves free. Zuckerberg famously took the book challenge last year, so we’re otherwise leaving him out of this list.

3. Travis Kalanick – The Fountainhead

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Ayn Rand’s novel on capitalism and her theory of Objectivism has had quite an impact on the Uber top boss, though he did dial his enthusiasm back a bit eventually.

In the past, Kalanick is known to have changed his Twitter avatar to the cover of Rand’s The Fountainhead. In a Washington Post article, he called The Fountainhead “one of my favorite books,” but he also brought up Atlas Shrugged, its sequel.

“It’s one of my favorite books. It’s less of a political statement. It’s just personally one of my favorite books. I’m a fan of architecture,” he told the Post.

4. Bill Gates – The Great Gatsby

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Gates called F. Scott Fitzgerald’s all-American magnum opus “the novel that I reread the most.”

Set in the 1920s, The Great Gatsby explores themes like decadence, idealism, social upheaval, and excesses, and has been often used as a warning tale of chasing the American Dream.

Gates’ favorite quote: “His dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.”

5. Sergey Brin – Snow Crash

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The Google co-founder, like partner Larry Page, is a sci-fi fan and counts Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash among his favorite books.

Stephenson is credited with inspiring much of the present-day VR industry with Snow Crash, which explores themes of privatization, demographic extremes, religion, technology and prejudice, to name a few.

The term “metaverse” was first coined in this book, where humans beings, as avatars, interact with each other in a 3D space that uses the metaphor of the real world.

6. Jack Ma- Life

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Alibaba founder Jack Ma is said to have been influenced by noted Chinese writer Lu Yao’s novella Life, as well as the wuxia (Chinese fiction or cinema featuring warriors of ancient China) works of Louis Cha.

Oh, and Ma’s been known to quote from Forest Gump, though its the movie that inspires him. The quote? “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.”

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from Tech in Asia https://www.techinasia.com/fiction-novels-tech-leaders-read
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