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Undergraduate Reading List

David L. Deeds's Book Recommendations:

"Markets may be efficient, but as this book so gleefully demonstrates, the actors in those markets are far from the rational, profit-maximizing robots of classical economic theory." --on Barbarians At The Gate

The Theory of Economic Development by Joseph A. Schumpeter
This is the single most important work on entrepreneurship and its role in the economy that has ever been produced. Schumpeter's insights on the process of creative destruction and the role of entrepreneurship and innovation in driving social welfare forward are revolutionary. There would be no theoretically grounded study of entrepreneurship without this work.

Administrative Behavior by Herbert A. Simon
Much of our modern theory and understanding of organizations, decision-making, and management is derived from Simon's work. The emphasis on decision-making fundamentally changed the way in which we think about organizations and how they achieve their goals.

David Deeds
Texas-Dallas

Barbarians At The Gate by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar
This is a wonderful read and one that every economist and business professor should reread every so often to remember how the real world actually works. Markets may be efficient, but as this book so gleefully demonstrates, the actors in those markets are far from the rational, profit-maximizing robots of classical economic theory.

Dune by Frank Herbert
Not everything is about business, nor should it be. This is just such a wonderful fully realized imagined society. It stands up to rereading again and again. Each time I pick it up I'm inspired by the creativity of Herbert's work.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn
The continual progress of science has been the greatest influence on human society over the past 100 years and will be for the foreseeable future. To understand science and the scientific process one needs to read and reread Kuhn's seminal work on the subject.

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
If the definition of management is getting people to do what you want, this is the seminal work on the topic. His lessons for the prince hold up well even in today's technological wonderland. You may not love him, but his ideas are interesting, important, and influential.

Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
This is another seminal work of science fiction/fantasy that presents a fully realized imagined world. It's also one of the great, wild rides. The prose, creativity, and imagination of the author are inspirational.

Organizations Evolving by Howard Aldrich
Aldrich brings a dynamic perspective to our thinking about organizations. This work makes you think less about what organizations are and more about how they got the way they are and where they are going. In particular, his emphasis on emerging industries and the interplay between social and economic forces in shaping the modern economy is critically important to the advancement of the study of entrepreneurship.

Fumbling the Future by Douglas K. Smith and Robert C. Alexander
This, like Barbarians at the Gate, is a book that every management professor and business student should read at least once. The authors' readable examination of how Xerox invented and gave away the personal computer business and all that goes with it is a wonderful cautionary tale about lack of vision and narrow definitions.

Biographical info: David L. Deeds is an associate professor at the School of Management at the University of Texas at Dallas. Before coming to Texas, he held faculty positions at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University and the Fox School of Business at Temple University.

He received the Mescon Award for best empirical research in entrepreneurship at the National Academy of Management meetings in 1996, was awarded the NASDAQ Fellowship in Capital Formation in 1997, and received The Fast Company Award for best paper on high-growth firms at the National Academy of Management meetings in 2000. Before pursuing a career as an academic, Deeds was co-founder and president of LightSpeed, a computer hardware and software developer specializing in custom CAD/CAM computer systems, from 1983 to 1989.