2023 Book Recommendations

I love reading. As a fellow innovator, I’ll bet you do too. I’ve found that the right book can fundamentally change your understanding of things. Shape your mind in new ways. Every week, I feature a book I found interesting in my weekly newsletter. The topics ranged from innovation to creativity, to design thinking, to customer experience, to business modeling, to brainstorming, as well as recommendations on envisioning the future: predicting, embracing, and surviving change.

The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness

The assumption that metrics comparing us to an average—like GPAs, personality test results, and performance review ratings—reveal something meaningful about our potential is so ingrained in our consciousness that we don’t even question it. That assumption, says Harvard’s Todd Rose, is spectacularly—and scientifically—wrong.

The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge

The search for answers to deep questions, motivated solely by curiosity and without concern for applications, often leads not only to the greatest scientific discoveries but also to the most revolutionary technological breakthroughs. In short, no quantum mechanics, no computer chips.

The Equality Machine: Harnessing Digital Technology for a Brighter, More Inclusive Future

Much has been written about the challenges tech presents to equality and democracy. But we can either criticize big data and automation or steer it to do better. Lobel argues that while we cannot stop technological development, we can direct its course according to our most fundamental values.

Mixed Signals: How Incentives Really Work

Drawing on behavioral economics, game theory, psychology, and fieldwork, Gneezy outlines how to be incentive smart, designing simple and practical rewards. He highlights how combining economic and psychological incentives can encourage people to drive more fuel-efficient cars, be more innovative at work, and even get to the gym. “Incentives send a signal,” Gneezy writes, “and your objective is to make sure this signal is aligned with your goals.”

Non-Computable You: What You Do That Artificial Intelligence Never Will

Will machines someday replace attorneys, physicians, computer programmers, and world leaders? What about composers, painters, and novelists? Will tomorrow’s supercomputers duplicate and exceed humans? Are we just wetware, natural computers doomed to obsolescence by tomorrow’s ultra-powerful artificial intelligence?

Preparing for a World that Doesn’t Exist – Yet: Framing a Second Enlightenment to Create Communities of the Future

Are you really ready for change? Are you prepared for a world changing as fast as you can read this sentence? Most leaders say they are prepared for the future, yet many organizations and communities are doing things in the same old way they’ve been working for decades. We’re living on the precipice of a new era in human history. Preparing For A World That Doesn’t Exist – Yet offers an approach to getting ready for an emerging society that will be increasingly fast paced, interconnected, interdependent, and complex. In Preparing For A World That Doesn’t Exist – Yet, you will learn about an emerging Second Enlightenment and the capacities you’ll need to achieve success in this new, fast-evolving world. Higher education, health and wellness, governance and the economy are transforming in ways few of us could have imagined ten or even five years ago. In this book, you’ll get the skills you need to ride the wave of the future and the perspective you’ll need to be ready to catch the next wave, too. Planners, physicians, government and higher-education leaders are using the principles and capacities described in this book to create better organizations, and best of all communities of the future that will lead to a planet that can thrive. Join them in looking at the future with excitement and anticipation.

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World

Anand Giridharadas takes us into the inner sanctums of a new gilded age, where the rich and powerful fight for equality and justice any way they can—except in ways threatening the social order and their position atop it. They rebrand themselves as saviors of the poor; they lavishly reward “thought leaders” who redefine “change” in ways that preserve the status quo; and they constantly seek to do more good, but never less harm.

From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want

Imagination is central to empathy, to creating better lives, to envisioning and then enacting a positive future. Yet imagination is also demonstrably in decline at precisely the moment when we need it most. In this passionate exploration, Hopkins asks why imagination is in decline, and what we must do to revive and reclaim it. Once we do, there is no end to what we might accomplish.

The Greatness Mindset: Unlock the Power of Your Mind and Live Your Best Life Today

Are you living your most authentic life? Are you leaning into your purpose or running away from it? Is this the story you want your future self to tell or do you ache for something more?

My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising

Gain a lifetime of experience from the inventor of test marketing and coupon sampling — Claude C. Hopkins. Here, you’ll get two landmark works in one and discover his fixed principles and fundamentals that still prevail today.

Listen Like You Mean It: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection

Ximena Vengoechea can show you how. In Listen Like You Mean It, she offers an essential listening guide for our times, revealing tried-and-true strategies honed in her research sessions and drawn from interviews with marriage counselors, podcast hosts, life coaches, journalists, filmmakers, and other listening experts.

Kites in a Hurricane: Startups from Cradle to Fame

Startups, even those started by mature founders, require a lot of monetary and intellectual investment in their entrepreneurial journey in terms of the development and collaboration of the ecosystem. There are a million stories out there of successes and failures, big and small startups, one-of-a-kind, and every kind of startup. However, one thing is common: the entrepreneurial journey is checkered with highs and lows, difficult decisions, roadblocks, perseverance, and lots of advice. Kites in a Hurricane is a book that describes how several startups innovatively used technology and entrepreneurial systems to solve the problems they faced daily when aspiring to build successful companies.

Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products

Most people think it’s because these companies are somehow able to find and attract a level of talent that makes this innovation possible. But the real advantage these companies have is not so much who they hire, but rather how they enable their people to work together to solve hard problems and create extraordinary products.

The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace

A captivating look at how companies can foster office culture that fuels creativity, productivity, and a sense of belonging and community among employees. A must-read for the future of work.

Metanoia: The Step-by-Step Method of Becoming a Master Co-Creator

This book is a practical manual written in lucid western terms, that explains the method, the path, of realizing who you really are, what obstacles, will you find on that path and how to avoid or solve them.

Nail It then Scale It: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Creating and Managing Breakthrough Innovation.

Nail It Then Scale It is the first lean startup book to help entrepreneurs through the process of launching a high-growth company. The book includes not just high-level principles, but a distilled, step-by-step guide of key actions successful entrepreneurs take to reduce risk and increase success.

Winning the Right Game: How to Disrupt, Defend, and Deliver in a Changing World

How to succeed in an era of ecosystem-based disruption: strategies and tools for offense, defense, timing, and leadership in a changing competitive landscape.

Shortcut: How Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell Our Greatest Ideas

From the meatpacking plants that inspired Henry Ford’s first moving assembly line to the domino theory that led America into Vietnam to the “bicycle for the mind” that Steve Jobs envisioned as the Macintosh computer, analogies have played a dynamic role in shaping the world around us—and still do today.

Reimagining Design: Unlocking Strategic Innovation

Kevin Bethune shows how design provides a unique angle on problem-solving—how it can be leveraged strategically to cultivate innovation and anchor multidisciplinary teamwork.

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

David Epstein examined the world’s most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters, and scientists. He discovered that generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel in most fields—especially those that are complex and unpredictable.

The Daily Laws: 366 Meditations on Power, Seduction, Mastery, Strategy, and Human Nature

The Daily Laws offer a page of refined and concise wisdom for each day of the year in an easy-to-digest lesson that will only take a few minutes to absorb. Each day also features a Daily Law—a prescription that readers cannot afford to ignore in the battle of life. Each month centers around a central theme: power, seduction, persuasion, strategy, human nature, toxic people, self-control, mastery, psychology, leadership, adversity, or creativity.