Books that most influenced my work in 2019

Jan 10

I read many books and articles on business transformation and innovation as part of my research for The Invincible Company in 2019. Among the 30 books I read last year, not all were about business though. I have also read biographies, scientific and philosophy books. But I came across enough inspiring business books to continue the yearly sharing exercise I started in 2017. Again, it might not have the same sales impact as a recommendation from the Financial Times or Bill Gates but here are my four favourites business books from 2019, in no particular order.

“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.” Henry David Thoreau

Brave New Work, by Aaron Dignan. (link)

Business transformation involves changing also the way we work. That’s both obvious and so hard. To complement my work in strategy and innovation, I keep an eye for books and publications that look into the challenges of business transformation via the organisational angle.

So I have been following Aaron Dignan and his company the Ready for a few years now. I have even used the OS canvas with clients on several occasions. So Brave new Work was a book I had been expecting. Building on his experience at the Ready, complemented by extensive research, Aaron Dignan provides a convincing synthesis of everything that’s broken with the way we work today, and of the many principles, techniques, and tools that inspiring pioneers are experimenting with to reinvent how we work.

It’s my favourite book on this subject since Reinventing organizations by Frederic Laloux (2014)

“The problem isn’t our people. It’s not our leaders either. It’s our operating system.” Aaron Dignan.

Blitzscaling, by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh. (link)

Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh define Blitzscaling as prioritizing speed over efficiency in the face of uncertainty. That book gave me great insights into how Silicon Valley successful entrepreneurs and thought leaders think about growth.

I’ve noticed that scaling is still a black box for many corporate clients I work with. Blitzscaling lifts the veil on this critical phase and some of the key enablers and blockers for growth.

“Great companies and great businesses often seem to be bad ideas when they first appear because business model innovations—by their very definition—can’t point to a proven business model to demonstrate why they’ll work.” Reid Hoffman

How to Reform Capitalism, by The School of Life (Alain de Botton).

This is a very short book that you can read within a couple of hours on a train or in a plane. It is full of insights into unattended human needs and how they could unlock the next evolution of capitalism.

This book already had an impact on my work as it is the inspiration for one of the techniques for better product & service innovation that Greg Bernarda (co-author of Value Proposition Design) and I incorporated in our strategy & innovation masterclasses. The below image is an illustration we use to show how identifying higher needs can lead to critical customer insights, here in the field of travel

“What’s surprising is how unambitious consumer capitalism has, until now, been about many of the things that deliver higher sorts of satisfaction. Business has helped us to be warm, sage, and distracted. It has been markedly indifferent to our flourishing.” Alain de Botton

Testing Business Ideas, by David J. Bland and Alex Osterwalder (link)

Full disclosure, I work with Strategyzer and I am currently busy writing The Invincible Company, the next Strategyzer book with Alex Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur and Alan Smith. But I have not been involved at all in Testing Business Ideas and I discovered it in November 2019 like every other reader. When I opened the book, I felt the same joy I had felt when reading Business Model Generation and Value Proposition Design a few years before; the pleasure of reading a book where design and visuals contribute to making the learning experience both pleasant and easy.

On the content side, I think this extensive library of 44 experiments is a critical contribution to the field of innovation. The now widespread diffusion of design thinking concepts has made innovation leaders and teams more comfortable with designing and prototyping but most of them still lack solid testing knowledge and skills. They now have the guide to bridge that gap.

“Great teams are able to gain momentum and build up stronger evidence over time with a series of experiments.” David J. Bland

That’s it for now! Hopefully those books are available at your local library, or easily downloadable on your smartphone/tablet.

The next business book on my reading list is Seeing Around Corners by Rita Mc Grath, another one that arrived at the end of 2019 that I am really looking forward to dive into. What is the next on your reading list?

Happy reading in 2020!