Business authors and experts have proclaimed enough revolutions to fill a long shelf. Most of these turn out more like ripples than tidal waves, as a check of any bookstore’s markdown shelves will show. Sure, a few tomes and gurus from the past three decades have made a difference in the way entrepreneurs operate–or at least in what they bring on the plane to read.

But even the rare title with the power to change rarely has much staying power. The speakers who promised to teach American companies to operate like Japanese firms were influential in the 1980s, but imploded in the 1990s along with Japan’s bubble economy. Likewise, the 1990s experts who proclaimed an end to the Old Economy lost listeners and credibility when the New Economy’s glitter faded in the new century.

Of the thousands of business books published in the last 30 years, only a handful have withstood the assaults of changing times and changing objectives to remain as relevant today as when they first came out. Here are nine worthy of space on any entrepreneur’s shelf–now and in the future.

1. The One Minute Manager (HarperCollins, 1981) by Kenneth H. Blanchard and Spencer Johnson
2. Out of the Crisis (The MIT Press, 1982) by W. Edwards Deming
3. In Search of Excellence (HarperBusiness Essentials, 1982) by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman
4. Guerrilla Marketing (Houghton Mifflin, 1983) by Jay Conrad Levinson
5. Innovation and Entrepreneurship (HarperBusiness, 1985) by Peter Drucker
6. The E-Myth (HarperBusiness, 1985) by Michael Gerber
7. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Free Press, 1989) by Stephen Covey
8. Reengineering the Corporation (HarperBusiness, 1993) by Michael Hammer and James Champy
9. Built to Last (HarperCollins, 1994) by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras

Entrepreneur

Reading about other people’s successes and failures as entrepreneurs can hold the key to helping you decide how to navigate your own business, says Anne Marie Knott, visiting assistant professor of entrepreneurship and management at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis.

Ms. Knott, who became fascinated with the lives of entrepreneurs in the sixth grade, when she started to check out library books about businesspeople like Franklin Winfield Woolworth, says certain biographies can not only help readers get a sense of which business theories work, but also help them develop their own theories about how to find success.

Here are some of the books she suggests, with her comments on each.

Having a sense of direction is essential to the success of a company, and as the business changes, so must the strategy and management style.

Sydney Finkelstein, the Steven Roth professor of management at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, says that a company’s business strategy and management theory should be constantly evolving. “Standing still is the worst strategy of all,” says Mr. Finkelstein, author of “Why Smart executives Fail: And What You Can Learn From Their Mistakes.”

Below, Mr. Finkelstein shares his reading list on business strategy and management theory as well as a Web site and movie. Here are his picks:

Recommended books for those seeking to improve their talent management.