Only the Paranoid Survive by Andy Grove
Only the Paranoid Survive by Andy Grove
Grove panders The Strategic Inflection Point, by which he means a big change in either Capital, Labor, Technology, or Environment. Helpfully, he points out that you only have to worry about the multi-billion dollar changes, you can ignore the smaller ones. Since the ideas in this book come across as business bromides, reading does give you time to lean back and think about the big changes in the world around you, and whether you're ready for them.
Demographics and budgets determine a country's future. Russia provides an exemplary case as its fortunes seem to rise and fall with the price of oil and wheat, all while their citizenry keeps failing (just read the intro paragraph to health in Russia). What about the country in which you reside?
What about businesses/careers? What gets you what you want?
But in capitalist reality, as distinguished from its textbook picture, it is not (price) competition which counts but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the source of supply, the new type of organization ... competition which ... strikes not at the margins ... of the existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives.