Five Top Business Books for 2014 and Five Modern Classics

The New Year is a great time to draw up a reading list of top business books for the months to come, from which you can learn in a professional or academic capacity; not least because recommended reading lists are often released by business schools and faculty at this time. 2014 is no exception.

The following list details five new top business books to get to grips with in 2014, and five classic works that have proven to hold a tangible legacy for the modern business world.

Encompassing topics as wide-ranging as the decision-making process, innovation and essentialism, and featuring authors like Peter Drucker and Michael Mauboussin, this list should by no means be taken as a definitive guide, but rather as an attempt to indicate the vast resources of top business books at the disposal of the eager reader and learner – no matter his field of particular interest.

Decision-making process features among topics in recent and forthcoming releases

1. Simon Sinek, Leaders Eat Last (Portfolio, January 2014)

In a nutshell: Sinek sought to demystify the ‘why’ in his first book and has now moved on to the ‘how’ with Leaders Eat Last. This is the follow-up to Sinek’s hugely successfully Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (2009) which was recently recommended by a 2013 graduate of Stanford’s Sloan program. The book considers organizational leadership examples from, not just the corporate sector, but also the military, to discuss how leaders can create and foster an environment in which their employees, and the organization as a whole, can prosper. Wharton management professor, Adam Grant, has selected Leaders Eat Last as a key release for 2014.

Author: Sinek teaches on the specialized master’s program in strategic communications at Columbia University and is an adjunct member of the RAND Corporation - a nonprofit global policy think tank.

Teaser: “Imagine a world where almost everyone wakes up inspired to go to work…”

2. Robert Sutton & Hayagreeva Rao, Scaling Up Excellence (Crown Business, February 2014)

In a nutshell: Also recommended by Adam Grant, Scaling Up Excellence investigates how the best leaders and teams develop, spread, and instill the right growth mindset in their organization. The book draws from a wealth of research and case studies aimed at highlighting how to improve an organization’s effectiveness.  

Authors: Both Robert (Bob) Sutton and Hayagreeva (Huggy) Rao are on the faculty at Stanford University. Rao, author of Market Rebels, is a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate Business School while Sutton is a professor of management science and engineering for its School of Engineering and previously penned Good Boss, Bad Boss.

Teaser: Which corporate mindset is best for you, the singular ‘Catholicism’ or the locally varying ‘Buddhism’?

3. Michael J. Mauboussin, The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing,  (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012)

In a nutshell: The Success Equation was published at the end of 2012 but received multiple votes in a 2013 best book poll of Wall Street analysts, traders and economists conducted by Business Insider. It builds on Daniel Kahneman’s 1973 paper ‘On the Psychology of Prediction’ in exploring the decision-making process. Those who recommend it point out that being able to tell when an outcome has come as a result of skill or whether it is just random, is quite a rare commodity among investors.

The Author: Mauboussin is an adjunct professor of finance and economics at Columbia Business School as well as being the head of global financial strategies at Credit Suisse. He is also chairman of the Board of trustees at the Santa Fe Institute.

Teaser:  ‘Much of what we experience in life results from a combination of skill and luck.’

4. Brendan Simms, Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy, 1453 to the Present, (Allen Lane, 2013)

In a nutshell: This historical tome was nominated as a book of 2013 by Constantin Gurdgiev, adjunct professor of finance at Trinity College, Dublin and the former editor of Business & Finance Magazine.  

In assessing the past 560 years of the region, Simms’ highlights how the land now known as Germany (previously the Holy Roman Empire) has continually been a preoccupation within the region, arguing that ‘the German question’ has provided the axis upon which much of European history has spun.

Today, Germany is center-stage once more as chief protagonist in the decision-making process for the eurozone since the onset of the economic crisis. Although this is not strictly speaking a business book, it could prove valuable and interesting reading for those with working with or within European markets who want an indication of where the future lies.

Author: Brendan Simms is a University of Cambridge professor in the history of international relations and is the president and co-founder of a European open-source think tank, The Project for Democratic Union (PDU).

Teaser: According to Gurdgiev, “The corollary of Simms' thesis is that instead of a Europeanized Germany we are likely to witness a Germanized Europe.”

5. Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, (Crown Business April 2014)

In a Nutshell: Greg McKeown is a proponent of essentialism, a concept that dates as far back as the time of Plato and Aristotle. In Essentialism, McKeown discusses the idea’s application to business by emphasizing the need to create a distinction between what you need to concentrate your efforts on and what you can forget about, so that you can get the right things done. It has been acclaimed by Forbes as a new book that can be especially useful to the entrepreneur. 

Author: McKeown, an MBA alumnus of Stanford now teaches a course on essentialism there. He has a background in teaching at some of the most innovative companies in the world, including Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter and has been recognized by the World Economic Forum as a ‘Young Global Leader’.

Teaser: “The Way of the Essentialist involves doing less, but better, so you can make the highest possible contribution.”

Five top business books that have stood the test of time

1. Peter Drucker, The Essential Drucker (Harper Business 2001)

Peter Drucker stands as a preeminent figure in the history of management thought. Indeed, throughout a career spanning more than half a century, his theories and insights were frequently proved to be ahead of their time.

Peter Drucker’s work is represented across as many as 30 books, so a good place to start is The Essential Drucker, which can be likened to a ‘greatest hits’ album. Featuring in TIME’s ‘25 Most Influential Business Management Books’, the magazine explained its choice by calling it, “a potent 26-piece collection,” which crucially was selected by Peter Drucker himself to accurately represent his entire body of work.

2. Charles Handy, The Age of Unreason (Harvard Business School Press, 1989)

Written while Charles Handy was a visiting professor at London Business School, The Age of Unreason discusses changes taking place in society and the workplace at that time. With the introduction of new technologies for instance, Handy argued that new business approaches were called for and that traditional practices should not be stubbornly clung on to.  

The book’s significance grew as it came to be seen as pre-empting the coming storm. According to TIME, “The rise of the Internet, ubiquitous communication, increased outsourcing, and the explosion of social media proved his vision to be amazingly prescient.”

Handy became interested in how organizations function while studying at MIT Sloan School of Management. He then went on to manage London Business Schools’ Sloan program and to teach managerial psychology. He also moved into broadcasting with the BBC radio programs ‘thoughts for today’ making him a well-known name within the UK.

3. Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad, Competing for the Future (Harvard Business School Press, 1994)

Competing for the Future highlighted the benefits of a company creating a climate in which industry changes could be anticipated rather than merely adapted to retrospectively.

As such, it proposed that strategic planning should be a constant concern of businesses rather than something looked at only in a period of relative ‘downtime’.

Gary Hamel is currently a visiting professor in strategic management at London Business School, while C. K. Prahalad (1941-2010) spent over thirty years on the faculty at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business after studying at IIM Ahmedabad and completing a Harvard DBA in 1975.

Together, the two men devised the concept of ‘core competencies’ - particular strengths relative to other organizations in an industry, which form the basis for providing value ahead of your competitors.

4. Taiichi Ohno, Toyota Production System (Productivity Press, 1988)

Taiichi Ohno’s Toyota Production System didn’t have the world’s catchiest title but that didn’t stop it from becoming hugely influential and a major precursor of what is known as ‘lean manufacturing’ – a means of avoiding wasting resources on anything that doesn’t ultimately provide value to the consumer.

Ohno worked as a post-war engineer at Toyota, attempting to up efficiency and compete with US competitors. His mission and the resultant system, a fusion of management philosophy and practices, cemented Toyota’s position as an industry leader and saw its principles exported elsewhere, form the subject of this enlightening book.

5. Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People (Simon and Schuster,1936)

Despite its age, Dale Carnegie’s iconic book still holds value for the way it beheld relationships as the key to success. The basic concept it devised became entrenched in the world of business and its impact still resonates today.

The book itself, which has sold a staggering 30 million copies worldwide, hones in on business communications skills arguing that technical knowledge is much less important than personality and the ability to lead people.

Dale Carnegie was also able to branch out into educational programs. Indeed, it is estimated that more than eight million people have partaken in Dale Carnegie Training, which is still operating on a global level to this day.

His methods were, for example, influential in Japan, where Carnegie visited 4 times between 1932 and 1953, the second time of which he was invited by the country’s tourism and railways boards to help improve communications and cultural understanding between Japan and the US.

Interestingly, Dale Carnegie changed the spelling of his birth name ‘Carnagey’ to give the impression that he was somehow connected with the multimillionaire magnate and philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie, which of course he wasn’t.

Image sources: Leaders Eat Last/ Essentialism and Scaling Up Excellence/ The Success Equation/ Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy/ The Essential Drucker/ The Age of Unreason/ Competing for the Future/ Toyota Production System/ How to Win Friends and Influence People