There is no substitute for direct experience, but I find that a good book can give me a perspective or a paradigm to approach a situation that it may have taken me months or years to realize on my own.
I remember reading "Crossing the Chasm" for the first time and experiencing the feeling that the Chasm model organized a number of scattered perceptions and events from my prior decade of work experience and made sense of them.
Not every book is that good, but some are and if in a few hours of reading I can shave a year of experimenting and sense-making off of future efforts it's a good investment. I try to balance engagement with reflection, but good books combined with direct experience have enabled me to get better faster than I would have without reading them.
I remember reading "Crossing the Chasm" for the first time and experiencing the feeling that the Chasm model organized a number of scattered perceptions and events from my prior decade of work experience and made sense of them.
Not every book is that good, but some are and if in a few hours of reading I can shave a year of experimenting and sense-making off of future efforts it's a good investment. I try to balance engagement with reflection, but good books combined with direct experience have enabled me to get better faster than I would have without reading them.