In past posts, I have recommended many books, but not many business books.
Frankly, most of them are just trying to profit with a new angle on “newsworthy” trends or events, claim to have found the “new” secret to success, or should have been a magazine article but are inflated to fill a book. Witness all the current scribes about how to deal with a post-pandemic world, with little that is new or important to say.
Books that really can expand our ways of thinking, help us see beyond what we normally see, are rare.
I just received the book Non Obvious Megatrends: How to See What Others Miss And Predict The Future, by Rohit Bhargava. In addition to the “non obvious” trends referenced in the title, the author discusses the key mindsets that visionary people have. In order to have a better understanding of the future than most people, you must first start with ways of viewing the world, of separating the wheat from the chaff. Once you learn how to do that, you can then better evaluate the flood of data, information, and opinion that comes your way every day. I found the book well-written and full of provocative ideas. I highly recommend it.
In the same vein, I continue to consider The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators by Christensen, Dyer, and Gregersen, which is now out in an updated edition, as the best single book on how to come up with new ideas ever published.
I must admit that many of the key ideas in those two books were also present in my book published twenty years ago. The original hardcover was titled Hoover’s Vision: Original Thinking for Business Success, at the publisher’s insistence. It is now out of print, but available as an expanded PDF for $10 under my original title The Art of Enterprise. The book includes several chapters with titles like “Seeing What Others Do Not.” Some of the thinking concepts in that book are included in my more recent book The Lifetime Learner’s Guide to Reading and Learning. That more recent book is more about books and how to read and learn efficiently than about visionary thinking. It is available on Amazon.
I believe those who read these books will be greatly rewarded by an expanded mind. If you want to see my other book recommendations, 160 on a multitude of subjects are in The Lifetime Learner’s Guide to Reading and Learning.
Gary Hoover
PS – You can see me on the History Channel this coming Sunday, March 7, at 9PM EST (8 Central) on an episode of The Food That Made America, and on one past and two other upcoming episodes in that series.
