Favorite Business Books of 2009

I was grateful to see that my book The Brand Bubble made Strategy & Business’ Best Books of 2009. Their entire reading list is here and represents some interesting trends in business this year.

There were a number of books I personally enjoyed this year for your end of year reference…

As I thought about my TED speech on post-crisis consumerism, many books provided valuable grounding on the origins of the final crisis, such as David Wessel’s fine book In Fed We Trust and A Colossal Failure by Lawrence McDonald. Fool’s Gold by Gillian Tett of the Financial Times and House of Cards by William Cohan are lively, vivid reads that capture the hubris and mistrust of a system gone awry with greed and indulgence. It seems we never learn from our mistakes is the premise of This Time is Different by Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart. As a data analyst in my own right, I loved the rigor they brought to this argument and I kept thinking of the Who song ‘We won’t get fooled again’ only realizing that’s likely not the case.

There are the beginnings of books on how to pick up the pieces, such as managing in a post-crisis environment in The Upside of the Downturn by Geoff Colvin and my friend Philip Kotler’s book Chaotics. Each look at opportunistic strategies for managing through what is likely to be a period of indefinite turbulence. (As my colleague told me on a recent trip to Quito, ‘you need to embrace volatility, it’s a way of life of here in Latin America’). And I really enjoyed Chris Anderson’s book Free as well as Bridge CSO Bob Gilbreath’s book The Next Evolution of Marketing.

I went over to London last month to receive the strategy award from our holding company WPP through it’s Atticus Awards Program. And I received from Jeremy Bullmore (a strategic god in his own right) A Master Class in Brand Planning: The Timeless Works of Stephen King. This book is a remarkable collection of observations on articles written by one of the fathers of account planning, Stephen King — by many of WPP’s top marketing practitioners. I was left thinking that while so much has changed, the sound fundamentals of insights, ideas and passion for craft are never more relevant or more important.