The 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards have been decided upon, and in the Innovation & Creativity category, Seth Godin’s wonderful new book, The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly? (published this month by Portfolio along with two companion books—V is for Vulnerable and Whatcha Gonna Do with That Duck?) takes the top prize.

“Entrepreneurship, customer service, invention,
technology, connection, leadership, and a
dozen others. These are the new performing arts,
the valuable visual arts, the essential personal arts.”
The Icarus Deception, page 12

The Industrial Age and its factories required quiet productivity and standardization, and the people who worked in those factories were certainly no exception. But the Industrial Age is over. We live in a different time now, which Seth Godin calls “the connection economy.” Connections involve people, but they also involve ideas, and as we make connections we create rather than replicate. Whether we’re flight attendants, sales people, wait staff, managers, or painters, we can all make connections. We can all make art. The term “creative” often gets applied to a specific type of person. Godin shows us why that is wrong, how each of us can better understand what we are capable of, and what a huge resource of innovation that understanding can offer. Before addressing any challenge, we first must address ourselves. Godin shows us the way.

To see the runners-up, check out our Innovation & Creativity shortlist announced last week.

The entries were submitted, the books were read, the decisions have been made. And, in the Finance & Economics category, Robert Shiller’s Finance and the Good Society from Princeton University Press takes the top spot.

“At its broadest level, finance is the science of goal architecture—of the structuring of the economic arrangements necessary to achieve a set of goals and of the stewardship of assets needed for that achievement. The goals may be those of households, small businesses, corporations,
civic institutions, governments, and of society itself.”
Finance and the Good Society, page 6

Financial Capitalism has a rather well deserved black eye coming out of a crisis largely of its creation. Robert J. Shiller makes no apologies for the financial industry or those in it, but takes a longer view and shows how financial innovation has advanced human goals and agency throughout history and can still be a force of good in society. He very adeptly and academically lays out the roles and responsibilities of the individuals within finance, and the role of finance within the larger society. Shiller demonstrates along the way that instead of demonizing finance, we could be doing our best to democratize it—that finding the solution to our problems and building a better future for all of us requires not a more profound anger, but a deeper understanding of finance and its role in our society. And most importantly, he provides us with one.

To see the runners-up, check out our Finance & Economcs shortlist announced last week.

Over the course of this week, we have posted the shortlist selections in the General Business, Leadership, Management, Innovation & Creativity, Small Business & Entrepreneurship, Marketing & Sales, Personal Development, and Finance & Economics categories. Just one last category left: Personal Development.

Stay tuned, because on Monday, December 17th, we’ll announce the category winners, and, on Wednesday, December 19th, we’ll celebrate the overall winner of the 2012 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards!

The selections for the Personal Development category are:

• Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown, Gotham Books
• Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours by Robert C. Pozen, Harper
• The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—Especially Ourselves by Dan Ariely, Harper
• So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport, Business Plus
• The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It by Kelly McGonigal, Avery

What can you do to be a better you? Maybe it’s refining your strengths, or developing new skills, changing a bad habit, embracing a particular (and maybe peculiar) personality trait. Whatever your goal for yourself is, personal development books can help. And the five books on our Personal Development shortlist can help change your life. Kelly McGonigal’s The Willpower Instinct reveals the science behind your impulses, your fears, and your tendency to procrastinate, and how you can use science to develop your willpower like a good workout helps develop your muscles. The benefit of that practice is an increased ability to reach the kind of Extreme Productivity that Robert Pozen details in his new book. Pozen’s results-oriented premise is that most of us waste a considerable amount of time being unproductive, and we can actually work less by doing more. But personal development isn’t all about “doing.” Sometimes it’s about “being,” and Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly challenges us to re-cast vulnerability as a welcome thing, to embrace the risk and the fear that comes along with it, and work through all those issues of shame, perfection, anxiety and cynicism that come up when we are courageous enough to face uncertainty. Perhaps vulnerability can prevent the kind of deceptive and defensive behavior Dan Ariely presents in his newest book, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty. Ariely’s books always help us better understand human nature, and by doing so, we can bring the better angels of our nature to work and to our businesses. And it’s not surprising then that when we do bring our better selves to work, we begin to love the work we do. Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You posits that the usual advice of finding work you love by following your passion is off target, and that we’re better off by following a craftsman mindset, focusing on the value we’re producing, the skills we’ve developed, pursuing what we’re good at.

Over the course of this week, we will be posting the shortlist selections for our 8 business book categories: General Business, Leadership, Management, Innovation/Creativity, Small Business/Entrepreneurship, Marketing/Sales, Personal Development, Finance.

On Monday, December 17th, we’ll announce the category winners, and, on Wednesday, December 19th, we’ll celebrate the overall winner of the 2012 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards! Stay tuned.

The selections for the Finance & Economics category are:

• All the Money In the World: What the Happiest People Know about Getting and Spending by Laura Vanderkam, Portfolio
• Bull by the Horns: Fighting to Save Main Street from Wall Street and Wall Street from Itself by Sheila Bair, Free Press
• Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust by John Coates, The Penguin Press
• Finance and the Good Society by Robert J. Shiller, Princeton University Press
• Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu & James A Robinson, Crown Business

It’s hard to remember the last year the Finance and Economics category didn’t revolve around stories of the malfeasance that led to the financial crisis and great recession of the past few years. Even the year before the crisis hit, we picked a book that warned of it—Richard Bookstaber’s A Demon of Our Own Design. This year, finally, it seems we’ve gotten past that. The best books of the year in finance and economics are all forward looking—about recovery and reorientation—whether the topic involves personal finance like Laura Vanderkam’s All the Money in the World or macroeconomic forces like Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson’s Why Nations Fail. The best books are diverse, as well, with a book from a Wall Street trader turned Neuroscientist John Coates about the biology of market cycles (The Hour Between Dog and Wolf), and a book from one of the most highly regarded bureaucrats of recent history, the Bush-appointed chairman of the FDIC Sheila Bair, about how we can fully repair and rejuvenate our financial and regulatory systems (Bull by the Horns). And finally, a book from the Yale professor of economics and best-selling author of Irrational Exuberance, Robert Shiller, entitled Finance and the Good Society, may make you somnolent while considering the stiff-sounding title and uninspired book jacket, but I urge you to just go ahead and crack it open. You’ll be glad you did.

Over the course of this week, we will be posting the shortlist selections for our 8 business book categories: General Business, Leadership, Management, Innovation/Creativity, Small Business/Entrepreneurship, Marketing/Sales, Personal Development, Finance. Then on Monday, December 17th, we’ll announce the category winners, and, on Wednesday, December 19th, we’ll celebrate the overall winner of the 2012 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards! Stay tuned.

The selections for the Small Business & Entrepreneurship category are:

• The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau, Crown Business
• The 20% Doctrine: How Tinkering, Goofing Off, and Breaking the Rules at Work Drive Success in Business by Ryan Tate, HarperBusiness
• The Good Food Revolution: Growing Healthy Food, People, and Communities by Will Allen with Charles Wilson, Gotham Books
• Just Start: Take Action, Embrace Uncertainty, Create the Future by Leonard A. Schlesinger & Charles F. Kiefer with Paul B. Brown, Harvard Business Review Press
• The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Most Exclusive School for Startups by Randall Stross, Portfolio

So you want to start a startup. The first hurdle is often the biggest: starting. Leonard Schlesinger, Charles Kiefer, and Paul Brown provide a guide to surmounting that obstacle via their book, Just Start. It’s not quite as simple as the title makes it sound, but the book provides very practical guidance rooted in concrete research, and it will motivate you to action. There’s sometimes no better motivator than the promise of independence, and Chris Guillebeau knows this well. The $100 Startup is a simple guide for self-starters, and a reminder that breaking away from the typical workforce and gaining career independence is more possible than you think. For those with ideas but also with a need for some nurturing, there is The Launch Pad, Randall Stross’ glimpse into the world of Y Combinator, a startup incubator, with enlightening case studies culled from the 2011 summer batch. Where some books are guides to would-be success, Stross’ is a fully-engaging testament to the power of creating an environment for innovation. Sometimes that environment needs to invite a little bit of goofing off, and Ryan Tate would like you to know that there is value in going ‘off task’. Tate’s The 20% Doctrine looks at Google’s now renowned ‘20% time’ and how other individuals and companies have embraced a similar approach to management and productivity. The results are compelling, and Tate makes evident the value of tinkering—both for employees and the companies for which they work. Such success stories are a motivating fuel for entrepreneurs, and Will Allen’s story of launching Growing Power, a non-profit community food system, is indeed inspiring as detailed in The Good Food Revolution. Allen tells the story of his startup journey and how it’s impacted him, his community, and the nation’s need for making good affordable food accessible for all people while also stimulating urban revitalization.

Over the course of this week, we will be posting the shortlist selections for our 8 business book categories: General Business, Leadership, Management, Innovation/Creativity, Small Business/Entrepreneurship, Marketing/Sales, Personal Development, Finance. Then on Monday, December 17th, we’ll announce the category winners, and, on Wednesday, December 19th, we’ll celebrate the overall winner of the 2012 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards! Stay tuned.

The selections for the Marketing & Sales category are:

• The Art of the Sale: Learning from the Master About the Business of Life by Philip Delves Broughton, The Penguin Press
• The Face-To-Face Book: Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace by Ed Keller & Brad Fay, Free Press
• Likeonomics: The Unexpected Truth Behind Earning Trust, Influencing Behavior, and Inspiring Action by Rohit Bhargava, John Wiley & Sons
• To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth about Moving Others by Daniel H. Pink, Riverhead Books
• Winning the Story Wars: Why Those Who Tell—And Live—The Best Stories Will Rule the Future by Jonah Sachs, Harvard Business Review Press

There are many myths about salespersons—often unflattering, or at the very least, misleading. Philip Delves Broughton would like to banish these myths once and for all. Delves Broughton’s new book, The Art of the Sale, skillfully strips away the mystifying veneer and provides surprising stories that redefine salespeople as artists working their craft. Daniel H. Pink would even go so far as to say that selling is something more fundamental than art: it’s simply an act of modern humanity. Pink’s To Sell is Human reveals the utter pervasiveness of ‘selling’: we all do it. Pink creates a convincing argument for why we should all embrace–and improve–our inner salesperson. Before sales comes marketing, and Jonah Sachs’ Winning the Story Wars presents an approach for marketers that returns to an age-old practice: storytelling. Sachs’ compelling argument tells us why storytelling is so crucial in marketing, and how to create an engaging and sales-inspiring narrative for your company. So you have a story—but what’s the value of it if nobody likes you. Rohit Bhargava’s Likenomics underscores the importance of how consumers like the companies from which they buy, and it’s more than simply creating an appealing narrative—this is real ROI-oriented strategy. Key to our likeability or the power of our story is how we communicate with our customers. Ed Keller and Brad Fay’s The Face-to-Face Book advocates for the balanced approach to relationship-building in the marketplace. Keller and Fay present real case studies of companies who do more than simply blast content to the masses—they look at how best to grow a relationship and select tools for communication carefully.

Over the course of this week, we will be posting the shortlist selections for our 8 business book categories: General Business, Leadership, Management, Innovation/Creativity, Small Business/Entrepreneurship, Marketing/Sales, Personal Development, Finance. Then on Monday, December 17th, we’ll announce the category winners, and, on Wednesday, December 19th, we’ll celebrate the overall winner of the 2012 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards! Stay tuned.

The selections for the Innovation & Creativity category are:

• Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age by Steven Johnson, Riverhead Books
• The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly? by Seth Godin, Portfolio
• Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back by Andrew Zolli & Ann Marie Healy, Free Press
• The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don’t by Nate Silver, The Penguin Press
• Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World by Sam Sommers, Riverhead Books

The Creativity/Innovation shortlist looks not only at specific practices, but also how to approach the topic itself. Throughout the list, books outside the usual “how to” practice appear, analyzing instead issues of prediction (The Signal and the Noise), circumstance (Situations Matter), technology (Future Perfect), and science (Resilience). These shortlist winners are deeper thinking books, hopefully allowing each reader the chance to digest the information on their own terms in order to come up with something unique. As they say, “think outside the box,” “be different,” or even, “fly higher” (The Icarus Deception). These books take us outside of our usual worlds by showing innovations in other areas, which end up being surprisingly familiar to our own.own.

Over the course of this week, we will be posting the shortlist selections for our 8 business book categories: General Business, Leadership, Management, Innovation/Creativity, Small Business/Entrepreneurship, Marketing/Sales, Personal Development, Finance. Then on Monday, December 17th, we’ll announce the category winners, and, on Wednesday, December 19th, we’ll celebrate the overall winner of the 2012 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards! Stay tuned.

The selections for the Management category are:

• The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business by Patrick Lencioni, Jossey-Bass
• All In: How the Best Managers Create a Culture of Belief and Drive Big Results by Adrian Gostick & Chester Elton, Free Press
• Judgment on the Front Line: How Smart Companies Win by Trusting Their People by Christopher DeRose & Noel Tichy, Portfolio
• The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change by Jason Jennings, Portfolio
• Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business by Frances Frei & Anne Morriss, Harvard Business Review Press

A common thread through this year’s Management category shortlist involves ‘the customer’—a focus on creating value, providing quality service (Uncommon Service), and helping employees be happy enough to follow through on those tasks. Instead of looking at a particular management style, the focus of how companies can better serve customers is comprehensive, filled with approaches to staff (The Advantage and All In), process (Judgment on the Front Line), adaption (The Reinventors), and more; all with one goal in mind: to serve. These are the books that seemed to best exemplify this approach.

Over the course of this week, we will be posting the shortlist selections for our 8 business book categories: General Business, Leadership, Management, Innovation/Creativity, Small Business/Entrepreneurship, Marketing/Sales, Personal Development, Finance. Then on Monday, December 17th, we’ll announce the category winners, and, on Wednesday, December 19th, we’ll celebrate the overall winner of the 2012 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards! Stay tuned.

The selections for the Leadership category are:

• The Commitment Engine: Making Work Worth It by John Jantsch, Portfolio
• The Pause Principle: Step Back to Lead Forward by Kevin Cashman, Berret-Koehler
• Talk, Inc.: How Trusted Leaders Use Conversation to Power Their Organizations by Boris Groysberg & Michael Slind, Harvard Business Review Press
• Turn the Ship Around: How to Create Leadership at Every Level by L. David Marquet, Greenleaf Book Group
• Vital Voices: The Power of Women Leading Change Around the World by Alyse Nelson, Jossey-Bass

Small business guru John Jantsch knows that if you can set a clear purpose and build a business around it that generates commitment in others, then you can let go of the controls and watch as your business seemingly runs itself. Learn how in his Commitment Engine. Throughout The Pause Principle, best-selling author of Leadership From the Inside Out Kevin Cashman offers a good balance of research, case studies and personal anecdotes to effectively advocate for the power of pause—the act of slowing down to give ourselves space and time to think and reflect. As a result, we can be more potent leaders, not lesser people. Make your company conversation-powered with Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind’s Talk, Inc. Why? Gone are the days of leaders who issue directives from on-high; needed are leaders who promote organizational excellence through the input from and debate with the company’s employees. L. David Marquet, a retired captain in the US Navy who successfully reinvigorated a poorly performing nuclear-powered submarine, reveals his atypical strategy for empowering his crew rather than clinging to more conventional military command methods in Turn the Ship Around. And CEO of Vital Voices, Alyse Nelson, fills her aptly-named Vital Voices book with the stories of women who have succeeded on the global stage as agents of change in a rapidly shifting world that desperately needs this new population of leaders.

And…the 2012 800-CEO-READ Book Awards are underway!

Over the course of this week, we will be posting the shortlist selections for our 8 business book categories: General Business, Leadership, Management, Innovation/Creativity, Small Business/Entrepreneurship, Marketing/Sales, Personal Development, Finance. Then on Monday, December 17th, we’ll announce the category winners, and, on Wednesday, December 19th, we’ll celebrate the overall winner of the 2012 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards! Stay tuned.

The selections for the General Business category are:

• Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Businessby Harley Manning & Kerry Bodine, New Harvest
• The Pirate Organization: Lessons from the Fringes of Capitalismby Rodolphe Durand & Jean-Philippe Vergne, Harvard Business Review Press
• Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy Worldby Michael Hyatt, Thomas Nelson
• Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Elseby Chrystia Freeland, The Penguin Press
• Private Empire: Exxon Mobil and American Power by Steve Coll, The Penguin Press

Owing to an increasingly service-oriented economy, the customer has been restored to the throne, and Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine’s Outside In provides an excellent argument for why customer experience is so important, and how we can put our customers at the center of our business. The global economy has a whole lot of dissatisfied customers—a group frequently referred to as ‘the 99 percent’. Chrystia Freeland’s Plutocrats gives us a timely look at the increasing disparity between incomes of the super-rich and everyone else, and in doing so gives a voice to that financially-frustrated majority. Also feeling frustrated are the thousands of businesses struggling to gain or maintain a presence within their respective markets amid a growing cacophony of attention-seeking sound. That group will find solutions–fifty recommendations in short and easy-to-understand chapters–in Michael Hyatt’s Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World. Rodolphe Durand and Jean-Philippe Vergne’s The Pirate Organization explains why following the surprisingly predictable actions of pirate organizations operating in our global economy offers a map to how ideas and innovations move from the fringe to the center. And finally, Private Empire by Steve Coll details the extraordinary operation of oil giant ExxonMobil, the most consistently profitable–and controversial–corporation in the US.