For those of you that like video instead of just reading who the category winners are of the 2011 Business Book Awards, we put together a quick 2 minute video for your viewing and listening pleasure.

Who will win the prestigious Book of the Year award? Stay tuned to this blog, and we’ll share it next week.

The time has come! Drum roll, please…

General Business

The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World by Daniel Yergin, published Penguin Press

In The Quest, Daniel Yergin expands his Pulitzer Prize winning history of oil, The Prize, to capture the entire energy picture. The story he tells captures the immediacy of the headlines while at the same time revealing a deeper, more dramatic narrative of behind-the-scenes personalities and maneuvering. Taking us from The Caspian Sea to Nigeria, Venezuela to the Persian Gulf, China and everywhere in between, The Quest is 700+ pages of fascinating stories and detail.

Leadership

Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck—Why Some Thrive Despite Them All by Jim Collins & Morten T. Hansen, published by HarperBusiness

Based on nine years of research, Great by Choice is a book that identifies and studies enterprises that have not only excelled statistically, but did so in a particularly turbulent environment. But beyond the vital research—and this book presents plenty of it, with almost 40 pages of research notes at the back of the book—a book has to be readable, the advice applicable, the examples memorable to really get you thinking and inspire change. Ten years after the release of Good to Great, Jim Collins and Morten Hansen have done all of that, given us the perfect book for our times and the understanding that it is the choices we make—not chance—that determines a company’s fate.

Management

Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Toolkit for Managers by Jeanne Liedtka & Tim Ogilvie, Columbia Business School Publishing

Most managers probably don’t consider themselves designers—they manage people and processes. But consider this: Instead of just thinking about who does what, how and when, what if managers began to think about how these tasks interact with customers, how the space these activities are done in (both the real space and metaphorical space) create efficiency, buy-in, job fulfillment, and profitability? By treating management as a design process, managers can create systems that have quality built in rather than simply offering rules and guidelines for employees to follow. This book is the guide to making that shift, and is an important resource for those who lead people.

Marketing and Sales

The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk, published by HarperBusiness

Gary Vaynerchuck’s first book, Crush It, showed us how to use social media to turn our passions into a business. The Thank You Economy details how to use social media to maintain and improve that business, and allow the personalities of people at all levels of a company to create real, authentic conversations about the way business is conducted. Filled with practical stories and ideas on how to use customer service, strategy, innovation, and sales and marketing to create a strong and trustworthy company, The Thank You Economy is the essential guidebook for leveraging social media to improve your business.

Entrepreneurship & Small Business

The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries, published by Crown Business

Written by a serial entrepreneur, this book examines the innovations made by his successful startups, lessons learned by those that weren’t and how the actions that paved their way can be replicated and lead to radically successful businesses, according to Ries. Based on the precepts of lean manufacturing, The Lean Startup illustrates how to get closer to customers, design products and services they really want and then streamline processes and procedures to help business startups become more successful. Heady, but immensely interesting, the book can help startups succeed at a time when they desperately need to.

Personal Development

Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt Into Fuel for Brilliance by Jonathan Fields, published by Portfolio

At first glance, Uncertainty looks like one of those niche books that will appeal primarily to born risk-takers whose pursuit of a personal dream outruns any natural fear of failure. And, while it does offer many stories about uber-successful, seemingly fearless folks who look uncertainty in the eye and never blink, what is so good about Uncertainty is that it goes beyond the anecdotal. Author Jonathan Fields very clearly presents the tools, talents and traits that people such as Randy Komisar, Sebastian Junger, and Haruki Murakami have put into practice to navigate the unknown and find success. And practice is the key word here, for being able to tolerate uncertainty isn’t the result of some innate DNA strand, but of the ability to make small changes and a commitment to doing the work that we are passionate about, despite the risk.

Innovation & Creativity

Best Practices Are Stupid: 40 Ways to Out-Innovate the Competition by Stephen M. Shapiro, published by Portfolio

Don’t think outside the box. Make a better box. Shapiro’s book looks at how to make improvements, find solutions to problems, and overcome a number of challenges by not following the usual methods. Through Shapiro’s research, case studies, and insights, this is a book readers can instantly put into action, and when it comes to change, new ideas, and new approaches, those on the path to innovation first will have a head start toward success.

Finance & Economics

Fixing the Game: Bubbles, Crashes, and What Capitalism Can Learn from the NFL by Roger Martin, published by Harvard Business Review Press

This year’s Finance & Economics shortlist is full of books about economic and financial bad behavior, tricks, gimmick and wars. Martin’s book is about fixing the game. There are many fixes in the book, but the big one is to break shareholder value theory’s influence on the business world in the same way the NFL broke gambling’s influence on the game in its early days—by not letting those who play the game gamble on it or, put in business terms, by segregating the actual market from the expectations market. The best books of the past few years have focused of the economic challenges of the recent past; it seems we’re now finally beginning to see a transition to addressing the great many challenges we face in the future.

Cheers to all the winners! Which one of these excellent books will be awarded the top prize next week?

Posting the strategy + business list before the Thanksgiving break reminded me that we haven’t seen quite as many “best of 2011″ business lists at this point of year as we have in years past. Beside the Goldman Sachs/FT award and s+b‘s list, The only two I’ve seen have come from booksellers—Amazon and Hudson.

Amazon’s Best Books of 2011 were announced earlier this month. The books in the Business & Investing category are:

• In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy, Simon & Schuster
• Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul by Howard Schultz, Rodale Press
• EntreLeadership: 20 Years of Practical Business Wisdom from the Trenches by Dave Ramsey, Howard Books
• Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck–Why Some Thrive Despite Them All by Jim Collins, HarperBusiness
• Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions by Guy Kawasaki, Portfolio
• The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries, Crown Business
• Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy by Martin Lindstrom, Crown Business
• Endgame: The End of the Debt Supercycle and How It Changes Everything by John Mauldin, John Wiley & Sons
• Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity by Josh Linkner, Jossey-Bass
• Poke the Box by Seth Godin, The Domino Project

But the list of books that would interest a business reader doesn’t end in the business category. It extends into Biographies & Memoirs with Walter Isaacson’s bio of Steve Jobs, and even Joshua Foer’s Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. Foer’s book also made it in the general Nonfiction category, along with The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick and A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor. The design nerds among us might also enjoy Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield, which made the Nonfiction list as well.

Hudson Booksellers Best were announced quietly late last month. The Best Business Interest included:

• Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain: How I Went from Gang Member to Multimillionaire Entrepreneur by Ryan Blair with Don Yaeger, Portfolio
• Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World by William D. Cohan, Doubleday Books
• Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story by Peter Guber, Crown Business
• Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World by Michael Lewis, W.W. Norton & Company
• The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World by Daniel Yergin, The Penguin Press

Other, less business-centric lists have been announced, such as Publishers Weekly, whose (admittedly long) Nonfiction list includes a smattering of books that would be of interest to the business reader:

• The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick, Pantheon
• Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World by Michael Lewis, W.W. Norton & Company
• The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson, Riverhead Books
• The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity by Jeffrey D. Sachs, Random House

There will most likely be many more coming soon. The Economist is making an event out of their list this year, with their first “Books of the Year” festival at London’s SouthBank Centre early next month. We’ll get that list to you when it’s announced, and will keep you updated as more come in, including our own!

strategy + business‘s yearly list of the best business books is always one of the finest. They do something really simple, but simply brilliant, having authors and thinkers who work in each category come in and curate the year’s books with lengthy essays. This always makes it one of the most thorough and thoughtful lists put out every year, and this year is no exception.

First up, we have James O’Toole—co-author, with Warren Bennis and Daniel Goleman, of Transparency: How Leaders Create a Culture of Candor—curating a new and timely category.

On Ethics and Aspirations, and The Good Company Revisited, James O’Toole chose:

• Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul by Howard Schultz with Joanne Gordon, Rodale
• Management Reset: Organizing for Sustainable Effectiveness by Edward E. Lawler III and Christopher G. Worley, with David Creelman, Jossey-Bass
• Higher Ambition: How Great Leaders Create Economic and Social Value by Michael Beer, Russell A. Eisenstat, Nathaniel Foote, Tobias Fredberg, and Flemming Norrgren, Harvard Business Review Press

For Strategy Phil Rosenzweig takes a look at Asking the Right Questions. He chose:

• The Essential Advantage: How to Win with a Capabilities-Driven Strategy by Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi, Harvard Business Review Press
• Staying Power: Six Enduring Principles for Managing Strategy and Innovation in an Uncertain World by Michael A. Cusumano, Oxford University Press
• Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters by Richard P. Rumelt, Crown Business

The picks in Management, addressing the Battle for Management’s Future by David K. Hurst, were:

• Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business by Bob Lutz, Portfolio
• Fixing the Game: Bubbles, Crashes, and What Capitalism Can Learn from the NFL by Roger L. Martin, Harvard Business Review Press
• Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure by Tim Harford, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

On Economics, David Warsh ponders… A Dismal Outlook?:

• The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World by Michael Spence, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present by Jeff Madrick, Knopf
• Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius by Sylvia Nasar, Simon & Schuster

In Marketing, books about Marketing Reenvisioned were picked by Catharine P. Taylor:

• We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World by Simon Mainwaring, Palgrave Macmillan
• Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant by David A. Aaker, Jossey-Bass
• The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk, HarperBusiness

On Leadership, and Learning to Lead the Old-Fashioned Way by Barbara Kellerman:

• Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow, The Penguin Press
• Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris, Random House
• Decision Points by George W. Bush, Crown Publishing Group

And for Technology, writing about The Ecology of Technology, Michael Schrage chose:

• What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly, Viking
• In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy, Simon & Schuster
• Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything Stephen Baker, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

And the pick of the litter, s+b‘s Top Shelf, was:

We’ve been following this list since 2003. You can browse past year’s picks below.