Thanks for writing this up! The Forum could always use more lists and recommendations. Upvoted.
I might be reading too much into this, but I found it confusing:
Some have suggested EA is too insular and needs to learn from other fields. In this vein, I think there are important mental models from the for-profit world that are underutilized by non-profits.
I wouldn’t expect people in EA to systematically neglect good business advice (at least, not to any greater degree than other entrepreneurs and charity founders do).
The “insular” critique mostly applies to areas where people in EA tend to favor sources that share their philosophical foundations and speak directly to their concerns. For example, they might care more about utilitarian philosophy than deontology, or more about development economics than anthropology, because those fields typically assume a commitment to measuring/maximizing impact.
By contrast, business writing already tends to be focused on measurement and maximization, so it fits the profile of “stuff I’d expect people in EA to like”.
To the extent that business books aren’t discussed much in EA, I think that’s largely a consequence of many Forum users being either researchers, students, or non-managerial staff at large orgs (e.g. software engineers), such that they don’t have much incentive to seek out this material. (I think that the most common books we rate on Goodreads reflect this.)
*****
This doesn’t take away from the utility of a list like this, of course!
But I feel like I hear a lot of offhand remarks that imply people in EA don’t care about anything that isn’t obviously linked to our particular nerdy interests, and that hasn’t been my experience. The managers and entrepreneurs I know in the movement are often well-read in the kinds of material presented here, and mostly seek to run their projects based on standard best practices from the for-profit world. (With a few minor quirks — more transparency, less hierarchy, more friendliness.)
Thanks for writing this up! The Forum could always use more lists and recommendations. Upvoted.
I might be reading too much into this, but I found it confusing:
I wouldn’t expect people in EA to systematically neglect good business advice (at least, not to any greater degree than other entrepreneurs and charity founders do).
The “insular” critique mostly applies to areas where people in EA tend to favor sources that share their philosophical foundations and speak directly to their concerns. For example, they might care more about utilitarian philosophy than deontology, or more about development economics than anthropology, because those fields typically assume a commitment to measuring/maximizing impact.
By contrast, business writing already tends to be focused on measurement and maximization, so it fits the profile of “stuff I’d expect people in EA to like”.
To the extent that business books aren’t discussed much in EA, I think that’s largely a consequence of many Forum users being either researchers, students, or non-managerial staff at large orgs (e.g. software engineers), such that they don’t have much incentive to seek out this material. (I think that the most common books we rate on Goodreads reflect this.)
*****
This doesn’t take away from the utility of a list like this, of course!
But I feel like I hear a lot of offhand remarks that imply people in EA don’t care about anything that isn’t obviously linked to our particular nerdy interests, and that hasn’t been my experience. The managers and entrepreneurs I know in the movement are often well-read in the kinds of material presented here, and mostly seek to run their projects based on standard best practices from the for-profit world. (With a few minor quirks — more transparency, less hierarchy, more friendliness.)