Looking for a last minute holiday gift for the business person in your life, or something profitable to read when you get bored of talking to the family and nobody wants to play Monopoly? Here, in no particular order, are my top choices of books on business, finance and economics published in 2015:
The Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future The fashionable idea that smart machines are going to destroy gazillions of jobs fast and leave many of us with nothing better to do than write poetry has not totally convinced the economist in me. But Martin Ford, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, makes a powerful, must read case, persuasive enough to win the FT & McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award.
From the Other Side of the World: Extraordinary Entrepreneurs, Unlikely Places No longer can it be taken for granted that the best entrepreneurs live in Silicon Valley. Elmira Bayrasli (an old friend) has scoured the world to find inspiring examples of business people overcoming significant obstacles to build thriving companies in countries ranging from Pakistan to Mexico. My review of the book is here. Want to find out where the next Steve Jobs may come from? This book is for you.
Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth At a Time It is always a treat to interview Jeffrey Pfeffer, a Stanford professor who seems to get off on sticking the boot into the work of other business academics, especially if that work should lean in the direction of political correctness. In his latest book, he attacks what he sees as a huge steaming pot of BS that has been written on the topic of "leadership". Hugely entertaining, and full of insights.
Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics Like many disruptive ideas, behavioural economics met fierce resistance as it tried to humanise the dismal science. Richard Thaler, one of the pioneers of this new approach, has written a gripping personal account of the lengths and pettiness to which the economics establishment resorted in its efforts to resist it, and of the growing use of it to explain and "nudge" how humans behave.
Phishing For Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception Two Nobel prize-winning economists, George Akerlof and Robert Shiller, have written a marvellous book on an important aspect of behavioural economics. They argue persuasively that markets often settle at an equilibrium in which some people make a handsome and sustainable profit by exploiting the ignorance or idiocy of others. A powerful counterblast against simplistic arguments asserting that "the market always knows best".
Work Rules! Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead Google is widely regarded as one of the world's best places to work. As the company's Head of People Operations, Laszlo Bock has played a key role in designing this extraordinary workplace. In this fascinating book, he sets out several important rules for creating a great work environment, as well as offering tips on how to get hired by the internet search giant (be a generalist; make your resume about your achievements not your job titles; in every job you do, always over deliver). You can read my take on the book here and watch an interview I did with Bock here.
The Summit. Bretton Woods 1944: J.M. Keynes and the Reshaping of the Global Economy As World War 2 drew to an end, a hotel in Bretton Woods played host to a conference to set the rules that would govern the global economy as peace returned. At the heart of this conference was a titanic struggle between Harry Dexter White, an American official later accused of being a spy for the Soviet Union, and the ailing great British economist, John Maynard Keynes. Ed Conway has written an extremely entertaining account of the goings-on in the New Hampshire woods, and of the significance for today's economy of what was agreed, and not agreed, there. You can read my review of the book in the New York Times here.
Other People’s Money: The Real Business of Finance The crash of 2008 revealed our financial system to be horribly flawed. But how did it get that way? And what should be done to fix it? John Kay (with whom I coauthored a few books a couple of decades ago) has written a highly readable and thought-provoking account, highlighting the agency problems that have arisen as a result of the industry managing so much of other people's money in ways that are often opaque and insufficiently accountable. Whilst I don't agree with all his proposed solutions, many of them deserve serious debate.
Smart Money: How High-Stakes Financial Innovation is Reshaping Our World - For the Better Since the crash of 2008, financial innovation has been widely damned (see previous book). Yet Andrew Palmer, a colleague at The Economist, has written a compelling contrarian account of why more, not less, financial innovation is needed if we are to create a financial system that truly benefits even the poorest and sickest people on the planet.
The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order This has been the year in which fading hype about Bitcoin as a currency gave way to growing enthusiasm for the block chain technology that powers it. The Economist even ran a cover story about it. Michael Casey and Paul Vigna have written by far the best account to date of the history of Bitcoin and other attempts at cyber money making, and spell out block chain's revolutionary potential to transform the efficiency of finance throughout the digital world.
The Public Wealth of Nations: How Management of Public Assets Can
Boost or Bust Economic Growth The privatisation of government-owned assets has been a "thing" for so long now that it is easy to forget that states around the world still own trillions of dollars worth of land, buildings and businesses. In fact, according to this persuasive analysis by Dag Detter and Stefan Fölster, state-owned assets remain the largest pool of wealth in the world, worth twice the world's total pension savings and ten times the total of all the sovereign wealth funds on the planet. Many of these assets are terribly managed. Yet if they were properly run, they would generate an annual yield of $2.7 trillion dollars for governments to spend, more than current global expenditure on transport, power, water and communications. Whilst I can quibble with some of the detail, but this book deserves serious attention from policymakers.
The Silo Effect: The Peril of Expertise and the Promise of Breaking Down Barriers Why do intelligent people so often make bad choices, especially in business? According to Gillian Tett, the root of this problem all too often is that we work in silos, restrained by rules or behavioural norms that push us to behave in ways that we privately know to be dysfunctional. It is hard to quibble with her analysis, which is supported by some fascinating and alarming case studies. Breaking down barriers must be the answer, though even when confronted with the evidence about the problems of silos, getting rid of them remains awfully hard to do.
The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World What if the agreement just struck in Paris on measures to fight climate change does not deliver the goods - which, let's face it, would not come as a huge surprise? As some important innovators have started to realise, we might need to resort to a form of large scale human intervention known as "geoengineering". Oliver Morton, a colleague at The Economist, has written a fascinating book on what could be done if something drastic and fast working is needed to stop the planet getting more than 2 degrees warmer, whether by sucking carbon from the atmosphere or reducing the amount of sunlight getting through the clouds to cook us all.
Happy reading - and let me know of any books you feel I should have included!
KINGSMITH.
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