2020 Book Recommendations

Bahcall, a physicist, and entrepreneur, shows why teams, companies, or any group with a mission will suddenly change from embracing new ideas to rejecting them, just as flowing water will suddenly change into brittle ice.

Mountains of print have been written about culture. Loonshots identifies the small shifts in the structure that controls this transition, the same way that temperature controls the change from water to ice.

How can you challenge and change yourself when you need it most? We’re creatures of habit, programmed by evolution to favor the safe and familiar, especially when the stakes are high. This bias no longer serves us in a world of constant change. In fact, today, safe thinking has become extremely dangerous.

The Corporate Startup is a practical guide for established companies that aspire to develop and sustain their innovation capabilities. The world around us is changing rapidly. There is now more pressure on established companies to innovate. The challenge most companies face is how to develop new products for new markets, while managing their core business at the same time. The principles and practices outlined in this book provide companies with a blueprint of how to manage innovation while they execute on their core business.

From executives complaining that their teams don’t contribute ideas to employees throwing up their hands because their input isn’t sought–company culture is the culprit. Courageous Cultures provides a road map to build a high-performance, high-engagement culture around sharing ideas, solving problems, and rewarding contributions from all levels.

There are five big challenges of leading in disruptive times: First, our neurobiology sees disruptive change as a threat to survival. This evolutionary reaction slows down our adaptation by reducing cognition and increasing burnout. Second, our old mindsets and biases prevent us from seeing a new reality clearly. This prevents us from being creative. We need meta-learning to learn, unlearn and relearn. Third, our threat states and fluid teams of the future make collaboration harder, just when it is most needed to create opportunities. Fourth, while we recognize we’re more interdependent than ever, we are missing the skill sets to influence our wider eco-system. Fifth, upskilling and growth is urgently needed for millions to solve our collective challenges. This requires a step-change in our ability to grow ourselves and others.

Though reaching ever further toward the skies, today’s cities are overshadowed by multiple threats: climate change, overpopulation, social division, and urban warfare all endanger our metropolitan way of life. The fundamental tool we use to make sense of these uncertain city futures is the imagination. Architects, artists, filmmakers, and fiction writers have long been inspired to imagine cities of the future. Still, their speculative visions tend to be seen very differently from scientific predictions: flights of fancy on the one hand versus practical reasoning on the other. In a digital age when the real and the fantastic coexist as near equals, it is especially important to know how these two forces are entangled and how together they may help us best conceive of cities yet to come.

More and more companies are concluding that the potential rewards of subscription-based products and services are worth the risk of radically changing their business models. They’re correct. The Membership Economy is here and it’s here to stay―and if you want to compete for the long run, you need to join it.

According to the Harvard Business Review, “most studies still show a 60-70% failure rate for organizational change projects―a statistic that has stayed constant from the 1970s to the present.” Drawing on his 20+ years of experience as a strategy and execution consultant specializing in midsize companies, Michael Canic helps committed leaders drive the odds in their favor. In Ruthless Consistency, he identifies the three surprising reasons most strategic change initiatives fail:

• Leaders unwittingly send mixed messages that demotivate their people and undermine those initiatives.
• Leaders focus on what they do instead of what their people experience.
• Leaders are not as committed as they think they are or need to be.

It’s on our televisions, newspapers, and the internet. Every day we’re bludgeoned by news of how bad everything is – pandemics, financial collapse, unemployment, poverty, environmental disasters, disease, hunger, and war. Indeed, our world now seems to be on the brink of collapse, and yet:

• We’ve made more progress over the last 100 years than in the first 100,000
• 285,000 more people gained access to safe water every day for the last 25 years
• In the last 50 years, world poverty has fallen more than it did in the preceding 500

What do Apple CEO Steve Jobs, comedian Chris Rock, prize-winning architect Frank Gehry, the story developers at Pixar films, and the Army Chief of Strategic Plans all have in common?

All of them have achieved breakthrough results by methodically taking small, experimental steps in order to discover and develop new ideas. Rather than believing they have to start with a big idea or plan a whole project out in advance, trying to foresee the final outcome, they make a series of little bets about what might be a good direction, learning from lots of little failures and from small but highly significant wins that allow them to happen upon unexpected avenues and arrive at extraordinary outcomes.