Blue Ocean Shift: Beyond Competing - Proven Steps to Inspire Confidence and Seize New Growth by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne | Hachette Books 

A commitment to growth requires creating something new, which entails risk, and risk necessitates a plan to be deliberate and smart, not reckless or blind. Blue Ocean Shift provides that very plan. Following up their bestselling Blue Ocean Strategy, Kim and Mauborgne offer step-by-step instruction for bringing together the right people within your organization, analyzing your industry, assessing your company’s strengths and weaknesses, and identifying opportunities to expand existing parameters, all with an eye toward market creation rather than on competition. A lively must-read for all business leaders, whether helming a restaurant or guiding a digital enterprise, Blue Ocean Shift will do what the subtitle promises: provide a clear map to creating your organization’s blue ocean. 

The Startup Way: How Modern Companies Use Entrepreneurial Management to Transform Culture and Drive Long-Term Growth by Eric Ries | Currency 

There are a lot of books this year that document well what is going wrong in Silicon Valley. Eric Ries explains what is still, undeniably and relentlessly, going right there. It is still the greatest economic and innovation engine in the world, and the five largest companies in the world are now tech companies, with three of them located within the Valley itself. One of the greatest innovations that has occurred there may be the form of entrepreneurship that has taken hold. There is a lot the rest of the business world can learn from the Valley mindset, focus, financial structure, and ways in which risk is accounted for, taken, managed, and rewarded there—and a lot it can adapt. The Startup Way explains all of that and how to do it. 

UnBranding: 100 Branding Lessons for the Age of Disruption by Scott Stratten & Alison Stratten | Wiley 

Scott and Alison Stratten are masters of the unravel—unraveling Selling and Marketing in previous Un books and, in another, going so far as to claim that QR Codes Kill Kittens (i.e., technology shortcuts distance us from human interaction). In a business world going gaga over tech, the Strattens emphasize that the basics still matter. In Unbranding: 100 Branding Lessons for the Age of Disruption, they instruct us to “treat people with respect, follow through with your promises, and be honest about the products you make.” Their examples, inspired by both dissatisfied clients and success stories, prove the perennial relevance of just such a message. A pleasure to read from start to finish thanks to its velocity and storytelling format, Unbranding offers inspiration every marketer can immediately put to work. 

Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures by Jennifer Romolini | Harper Business 

Part memoir, part career survival guide, Jennifer Romolini’s book is a lifeline for those of us who see the workplace as a fishbowl of awkwardness. If you find academic studies and social psychology jargon hive-inducing, her inspiring and beautiful prose provides words one can actually imagine saying out loud to another human being in an office. She’s the no-nonsense friend you want on speed dial for all of your vexing work dilemmas, whether you’re a new grad or a seasoned manager. Weird in a World That’s Not is funny and idiosyncratic, irreverent and satisfying and honest. Romolini’s hard-won experience gives us the courage to move through our work lives with grace and self-respect, and that’s about as good as it gets. 

Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth | Chelsea Green Publishing 

We are currently so addicted to growth that it is our only goal, the constant economic “fix” and organizational imperative we’re all chasing. Economists and politicians would have us believe that our other goals will be addressed if and when we achieve such growth, even as history has shown that high-growth has led to increased inequality and more environmental damage. Doughnut Economics suggests that the purpose of the economy should not be its own inexorable growth, but to provide for the basic needs of the people. Kate Raworth argues forcefully that we must put human life and welfare back at the center of our economic thinking and ask, “What enables human beings to thrive?” rather than simply what causes economic growth. 

Janesville: An American Story by Amy Goldstein | Simon & Schuster 

Amy Goldstein’s Janesville is an intimate portrayal of one Wisconsin town and a broader American story of what happens when the most economically important element of a community closes its doors. When the last GM Tahoe rolled off the assembly line two days before Christmas in 2008, the shuttered plant left behind not only GMers, but also people at the freight yard who unloaded the GM parts, people at the Lear company who made the seats for the GM trucks, shopkeepers no longer patronized by all those who had lost their jobs, construction workers no longer needed to build new houses, and tradespeople who didn’t have houses to plumb, electrify, plaster, or carpet. It is these stories and more that Goldstein masterfully weaves together to present an urgent, searing tale of the domino-decline of a proud and industrious American community.

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari | Harper 

Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus is chilling at times. It will probably shake you and your sense of reality. But it also prompts a profound questioning of existence on Earth that can enrich your life and alter what you find important and appreciate within it. Do you have a world view? Prepare for it to be challenged. Harari doesn’t question the future so much as he lays out our current trajectory toward it, prompting us to question it, perhaps challenge it—and to ask our politicians, economists, and especially scientists to examine the emerging data-centric view of the world. Rather than answers, he leaves us with a few fundamental questions at the end, one of which is: “What’s more valuable—intelligence or consciousness?” In the process, he raises both.