97 Books Like The Future of Work

Nike is one of the most recognized companies in the world. Known for its innovative products and its focus on high performance, the Nike mystique intrigues everyone. I love this book because it tells the story of Nike from the very beginning. Few people are aware of the many obstacles this company overcame to become the powerhouse it is today.

A new company must be innovative just to survive, and Shoe Dog describes years of struggling and experimentation at Nike simply to gain traction in its business. The massive scale the company now enjoys is built on collaborative partnerships with athletes, designers, suppliers, and many others in its vast ecosystem.  

In his breakthrough book, Henry Chesbrough described how companies are increasingly looking outside their boundaries for ideas and technologies they can bring in, as well as license their underutilized intellectual property to other organizations.

What I love about it is that Chesbrough applies the open innovation philosophy to actual business settings and explains how to create value in an open innovation landscape. The book includes a diagnostic instrument that helps a company assess its existing business model and explains how to overcome common barriers to creating a more open model.

The overall message for companies moving forward is that they can create and capture value from ideas and technologies wherever they may be found. Open innovation as a concept has spread widely, and companies today are advised to search far and wide for the resources they need and partners to work with.

Even the smartest person in the room is limited in intelligence, creativity, and experience. Solving problems in today’s complex and volatile business environment requires more than maximizing individual effort and output–it requires collaboration.

I love this book because it demystifies the collaborative process and provides practical strategies that prioritize teamwork, creativity, and shared success. Effective collaborators care about the well-being of their co-creators, are open and willing to share information and revel in collective rather than individual outcomes.

For those who seek to adopt the collaborative mindset, the book points the way to harnessing the power of networks and relationships and expanding one’s sphere of influence. 

Nothing in the past few years has disrupted the operations of business firms more than artificial intelligence. This book marks the age of AI with the emergence of a business environment shaped by digital networks, analytics, and artificial intelligence. It gives a credible account of how fast-moving digital firms in many sectors are disrupting traditional firms and upending the existing rules of business.

I love how this book gives examples of digital firms we’ve all heard of–Netflix, YouTube, Airbnb, etc.–and clearly explains how these firms rapidly achieve scale and become strong competitors. AI is becoming increasingly impactful, and all firms must learn how to use AI if they want to remain competitive.

I can’t say I love this book since I don’t agree with his premise: wind, water, and solar can do it all. But to be fair, he’s right that cleaning up the air by removing coal plants would be a boon to global health everywhere. 

He makes an appealing case. But his vision of the future founders for me on the intermittency issue of his power sources, particularly wind and solar. How will they scale to match the needs? Where is the battery technology to support the downtime? What are the environmental impacts? How will the power get from producer to user? He is opposed to nuclear power and yet it is the closest thing to a plug-to-plug replacement for the coal fired plants we all agree should be phased out.

Putting in the numbers is what Gates does in his book. Climate change is real, no question. How to address it is where the controversy comes in. I really like that from the outset, Gates proposes five questions to consider whenever climate change is discussed: what fraction of the annual carbon dioxide emission are you removing? What’s your plan for cement? How much electrical power will be needed, what’s the cost, and how much space will it take up? 

But he’s optimistic that zero emissions can be reached. He argues there are many options to explore, including nuclear, and says, contrary to much of the news reporting, don’t focus on 2030; focus instead on 2050 to give the best solutions time to emerge.

Of the small subgenre books that deal with the way games aid education, Toppo's shows how games can make a difference in the way students learn by looking at first at a Washington, D.C. school's success with improving math scores through game playing. From there, he visits professors and visionaries, all of whom have helped kids learn through games. One thing becomes clear: if there were a games class in every school, especially in underserved communities, student grades would go up.

It is hardly news that housework is gendered. But in this classic study Cowan, by taking housewifery seriously as work and kitchen utensils and appliances seriously as technologies, opens up the whole panorama of production and consumption in a domestic setting. The influx of new appliances, and in a more convenient form old materials (such as powdered soap) in the early decades of the 20th century worked to, in a sense, “industrialize” the home. Unlike factory workers, however, housewives were unpaid, isolated, and unspecialized. Their managerial role shrank (hired help disappeared from most homes)  and rather than being drained of meaning, like the work of factory hands, theirs became burdened with portentous implications of love, devotion, and creativity. Finally, as housework became “easy,” standards rose. At one time changing the bed might have amounted to putting the bottom sheet in the wash and the top sheet on the bottom,… show more.

I found myself wanting to stand up and applaud while reading this book. The description of what a kid really does on a typical day at school is alone worth the purchase (and will make you laugh... and then heave a deep sigh.) But more importantly, these two teachers outline the pitfalls our digitally-driven world has created in terms of education, deep thinking, social responsibility, and ability to problem solve. As someone who has done a lot of research into the “screens in school” topic, I found this book to be thorough and clear, and written with enough humor to make a tough topic palatable. 

In a time when industrial policy is no longer taboo, even in the West, I would recommend this book to remember the pivotal role that state policies play in promoting development.

More than being the result of self-made people, crucial innovations like the smartphone result from the research backbone that the state provides.

The book is, therefore, thought-provoking as it debunks myths of state decline during the so-called neoliberal age, although recognises that private firms have acquired excessive power.