What can I do with a Marketing and Sales double major?

What resources can you recommend for a CEO of a mid-sized startup that wants to transition focus from a sales/marketing CEO to a product/engineering CEO?

• I am the CEO of a well-funded Internet business. We have focused almost entirely on building a simple product that doesn’t have a huge differentiation in the market, but we have executed well on sales and marketing helping us to scale to significant size (run rate of $10m USD). During this growth phase, I neglected the focus on product and engineering mainly because in the market where I operate (outside of the US), the VC ecosystem rarely funds companies that don’t have significant traction with regards to revenues. Now that we have proven the model and raised significant cash, I would like to transition the core focus of the business to amazing products that increase the loyalty of our user/customer base. I have hired some pretty experienced people (engineering/product), but I feel like I need to get smarter to be able to understand best practices for planning, management, process, motivation of team (engineers are different than sales people), remote teams, team communication and overall understanding how to think about product and engineering on a high level. I am not technical, but I want to understand basic principals so I can be a better CEO.   Are there any good books for idiots like me? ;)

• Answer:

  As a head of Engineering, I recommend you have a nice long chat with your head of Engineering. You will be surprised that he may have ideas and plans that can be executed. Of course, taper this with market expectations and realities as well. If you don't have a head of Engineering then get a good one. In terms of resources like books, I personally like reading corporate histories of companies that made it and the works of Clayton Christensen (ie. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0060521996/ref=redir_mdp_mobile).