Did you ever wonder what successful business leaders read? A new study by Ipsos says that business leaders are hungry for quality information. America’s business elite (average demographic for these business leaders is a 51 year old male, earning $408,000 per year, with a personal net worth of $1.7 million) continues to rely on newspapers and magazines for information. Today’s business leaders looking for good information are creating custom mixes of print, broadcast and online media to get fresh business insights.

BusinessWeek is one publication that has spent over 18 months redesigning its site and magazine to meet the needs of today’s busy decision makers. They’ve reinvented their approach to mix the best parts of traditional media with blog quotes and items and quality outside sources. For example, in the magazine (and online) you’ll find a new “The Business Week” section. It offers several pages of one or two paragraph digestable chunks, contained in boxes for easy scanning.

While the Ipsos study indicates that the business elite is spending more time reading business information on the Web than in the past, books still hold a significant place in their decision making processes. Harriet Rubin’s NYT article “C.E.O. Libraries Reveal Keys to Success,” reveals that successful business people indulge their love for books - and business books often aren’t included in these private libaries. Venture capitalist Michael Moritz, of Google, Paypal, Yahoo! and YouTube IPO fame, says: “I rarely read business books…” Sidney Harman, founder of Harman Industries, a $3 billion producer of sound systems, says of his library: “My books have helped me develop a way of thinking critically in business and in golf — a fabulous metaphor for the most interesting stuff in life. My library is full of things I might go back to.”

So while the buzz is all about Web 2.0, the movers and shakers are collecting books and reading Shakespeare, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Machiavelli’s The Prince. Ms. Rubin’s article mentions a book seller who marks trends by noting books that business leaders buy; a fascinating way to track what matters to the business elite.