Box's Aaron Levie: 5 books you must read to understand Silicon Valley
- Jon Xavier
- Web Producer- Silicon Valley Business Journal
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But for as much as Box spends its time reaching for what's next, Levie spends an equal amount of time thinking about the past. In fact, that's his (one) hobby, he says. He's kind of an amateur historian of the Silicon Valley, reading anything and everything he can about its history and the trends that have shaped it — from business books to memoirs to old trade publications and magazine articles.
I asked Levie for his best suggestions of books about the history of Silicon Valley. He gave me five — all focused on specific companies rather than the Valley as a whole. Taken together, Levie said, they give a pretty good overview of the Valley at different times and through different industry lenses. Click through the slideshow to the right for Levie's picks.
And in case you're wondering if you should bother to read five books about the technology industry of yesteryear, you should know that Levie considers it a big part of his competitive advantage.
Understanding the history of the technology is crucial to predicting its future, Levie told me, because there are a few broad trends in the industry that seem to repeat again. For example, he said reading tech reporting about the Internet in 1992 before the first web browsers was illuminating because it showed how much one product changed what people considered possible. The same thing just happened with the introduction of the iPad, he said, and might be coming with wearable computing.
Jon Xavier is Web Producer at the Business Journal. His phone number is 408.299.1826.
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