Reading List: Ben Houston of ThreeKit

“Reading List” is an occasional series where we request ecommerce professionals to name a few of their favourite books and blogs and tell us why.

For this setup, we grapple with Ben Houston. He’s chief technology officer of ThreeKit, which specializes in producing images for internet vendors in 3D, virtual reality, and augmented reality.

5 Favorite Books

“Building Products for the Enterprise: Product Management in Enterprise Software“ by Blair Reeves and Benjamin Gaines

“This is a excellent book by product managers at Adobe. Enterprise product direction is significantly harder than conventional product management in applications. This publication helps delineate the differences in a transparent manner, including recommendations for success.”

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“The Solution Selling Fieldbook: Practical Tools, Application Exercises, Templates and Scripts for Effective Sales Execution” by Keith M. Eades, James N. Touchstone, and Timothy T. Sullivan

“This book was recommended by our sales guide, John Kim. It’s a guide to selling applications to enterprises. In hindsight, it seems obvious but lots of individuals usually just wing it and sort of follow the guidelines in the publication with no structure that this book effectively communicates.”

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“Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies” by Reid Hoffman, Chris Yeh, and Bill Gates (Foreword)

“This is one of the favorite books of Godard Abel, our executive chairman. He recommended it to me. It was incredibly interesting as it explained the special challenges that include rapid scaling of a business once it’s achieved product-market fit. Like product direction for enterprises, there are unique challenges that I wouldn’t have otherwise expected without this publication.”

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“Physically Based Rendering: From Theory to Implementation, Third Edition” by Matt Pharr, Wenzel Jakob, and Greg Humphreys

“This book includes a wealth of knowledge about photorealistic film graphics. It’s full of rather technical advice that’s clear enough to get a non-programmer to comprehend.”

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“Light Science & Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting” by Fil Hunter, Steven Biver, and Paul Fuqua

“This book provides a deep dive into the intricacies of lighting and how it affects photos . The concepts are approached in a really scientific manner, and are helpful in understanding the basic principles of photography.”

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5 Favorite Websites

MIT Technology Review

“This includes many cutting edge projects to stimulate your thinking about where technology is going. A surprising number of those far-off endeavors covered within this site wind up becoming enterprise or consumer products in a year or two.”

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WIRED

“I loved Wired as a child. The posts were amazing. Somehow I bought the first four decades of its print run. I spent months reading through them before I had read pretty much every article in each issue. Very formative.”

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The Economist

“The Economist is clear and concise with an international perspective. We often lose track of what we’re doing around the world.”

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Harvard Business Review

“Again, a fantastic resource. It comprises many awesome nuggets of information pertinent to running a business — such as training, employee reviews, presentations, and the most recent hiring trends.”

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Make

“This website is wonderful for finding fun projects to do with my daughter, such as 3D printing, costume making, and simple electronics.”