For me, inspiration is key to everything. I’m always looking for new and better ways to do new and better things. And with so many smart and insightful people out there, why not read their books to benefit from their thoughts?
This is a somewhat incomplete list of books on my Kindle that did inspire me when I read them.
Got more tips? Hit me!
One thing I really enjoy is to exchange tips on great inspiration. Got a book you really think I should read? I’d love to hear from you so feel free to send me an email.
Rising Strong
â€The physics of vulnerability is simple: If we are brave enough often enough, we will fall. This is a book about what it takes to get back up and how owning our stories of disappointment, failure, and heartbreak gives us the power to write a daring new ending. Struggle can be our greatest call to courage and Rising Strong, our clearest path to deeper meaning, wisdom and hope. â€
* What does the industry need to do today (not tomorrow) to stay valuable and relevant?
* Is digital collaboration the death of idea ownership?
* What the f**k do clients know about great advertising?
* How are the porn industry, illegal black market and bitcoins changing online culture today?
* Should we make things people want rather than make people want things?
* How do we ‘do’ innovation? If you want to get a point of view on these and a whole host of other questions, just pick up this book which features a collection of essays from 35 leading creative directors and business owners.
“While your work speaks about you, does it really speak for you? Does it represent you well? The key to making your work resonate is to uncover, develop, and then bravely use your authentic voice.â€
Exponential Organizations: Why new organizations are ten times better, faster, and cheaper than yours (and what to do about it)
â€In the past five years, the business world has seen the birth of a new breed of company—the Exponential Organization—that has revolutionized how a company can accelerate its growth by using technology. An ExO can eliminate the incremental, linear way traditional companies get bigger, leveraging assets like community, big data, algorithms, and new technology into achieving performance benchmarks ten times better than its peers.â€
Creativity / Team dynamics
Team dynamics
This is a super interesting book on group dynamics and how to set up teams for efficiency and success. Working as a project manager or team leader? Then you need to read this one!
Team dynamics
Simon Sinek (of Why, How, What fame at TED) writes about modern leadership in a way that is easy to understand and hard to argue against. If you are a team manager and haven’t already read the book, stop now. Really. Stop now. And order the book. And read it. Your team, and yourself, will thank you. Then you can thank me.
For the stressed ones, Sinek has a talk on TED on the book’s topics.
Company culture
Laszlo Bock’s book – written from inside Google – is a compelling and surprisingly playful manifesto on company culture that offers lessons including:
Great read!
» Amazon
Creativity & Product development
Brands must build a new relationship with their customers and the culture they participate in. The old rule was to create safe, ordinary products and combine them with mass marketing. The new rule: create truly innovative products and build the marketing right into them. Today, it’s within the product itself that a brand has the most leverage with consumers. So where should companies start? They must take their brands back to their foundations and realize that the message is not the product, but that the product is the message.
Team dynamics
What do strong teams all over the world have in common? And how can you create a strong team? Create a tribe.
Dave Logan book gave me lots of insights that I have taken with me in my work with teams at Stendahls. This is a good read for both team managers and team members.
Team dynamics
Most of the time â€the bible of…†means absolutely nothing when it comes to management books. But really – this is the bible of facilitation.
I really like it when authors use real world tested and reseached foundations for their methods, and Dale Hunter has both. If you are interested in how to set up world class functioning teams or is interested in how to facilitate groups, this is it.
It’s not the most easy-read book out there but is is really good.
Creativity
Show Your Work! is about why generosity trumps genius. It’s about getting findable, about using the network instead of wasting time “networking.†It’s not self-promotion, it’s self-discovery—let others into your process, then let them steal from you. Filled with illustrations, quotes, stories, and examples, Show Your Work! offers ten transformative rules for being open, generous, brave, productive.
Creativity
You don’t need to be a genius, you just need to be yourself. That’s the message from Austin Kleon, a young writer and artist who knows that creativity is everywhere, creativity is for everyone. A manifesto for the digital age, Steal Like an Artist is a guide whose positive message, graphic look and illustrations, exercises, and examples will put readers directly in touch with their artistic side.
Culture
The culture book is a collage of unedited submissions from employees within the Zappos Family of companies sharing what the Zappos culture means to them. A new version is created each year and it reflects the true feelings, thoughts and opinions of the employees.
Office design
Based on the work at the Stanford University d.school and its Environments Collaborative Initiative, Make Space is a tool that shows how space can be intentionally manipulated to ignite creativity. Appropriate for designers charged with creating new spaces or anyone interested in revamping an existing space, this guide offers novel and non-obvious strategies for changing surroundings specifically to enhance the ways in which teams and individuals communicate, work, play–and innovate.
Ideation
The Idea Agent is a practical idea management handbook, aimed at people who want to take an active role in creative processes across all areas. It combines the creatively wild with the rationally structured techniques for innovation to provide readers with a varied toolbox of proven idea management methodology.
Team development
Project retrospectives help teams examine what went right and what went wrong on a project. But traditionally, retrospectives (also known as “post-mortemsâ€) are only held at the end of the project—too late to help. You need agile retrospectives that are iterative and incremental. You need to accurately find and fix problems to help the team today.
Office culture
This is a different kind of business book – one that explores a new reality. Today, anyone can be in business. Tools that used to be out of reach are now easily accessible. Technology that cost thousands is now just a few pounds or even free. Stuff that was impossible just a few years ago is now simple.
Briography / Creativity
A commedian’s biography? Really? Yes, really! I read Amy Poehlers biographic book as just that – a biography, but soon it hit me. The world of improv theatre is extremely similar to the a good creative process at an agency.
And the book also gave me my new favourite quote: “The talking about the thing isn’t the thing. The doing of the thing is the thing.”
Agency biography
An interesting look into one of Sweden’s leading agencies and the journey of change they’ve been on for the last couple of years. Want to avoid falling in to â€old agency pitfallsâ€? Read this book.
» My takeaways (in Swedish)
A great read on the importance of keeping teams nible and working agile.
Ideation
A book on creativity written in 1939? For real?
For! Real!
James Webb Young’s book shows that creativity all comes down to common sense. This book is a must-read for all creatives. And hey, it’s a really thin one. Pick up a copy today!
Pitching
A professional “pitching coach†for one of the world’s largest marketing conglomerates, Jon Steel shares his secrets and explains how you can create presentations and pitches that win hearts, minds, and new business. He identifies the dos and don’ts and uses real-world examples to prove his points. If you make pitches for new business, this is the perfect book for you.
Creativity
It isn’t enough to just do your job anymore. In order to thrive in today’s marketplace, all of us, regardless of our role, have to be ready to generate brilliant ideas on demand.
Business creativity expert Todd Henry explains how to establish effective practices that unleash your creative potential. Born out of his consultancy and his popular podcast, Henry has created a practical method for discovering your personal creative rhythm. He focuses on five key elements:
• Focus: Begin with your end goal in mind.
• Relationships: Build stimulating relationships and ideas will follow.
• Energy: Manage it as your most valuable resource.
• Stimuli: Structure the right inputs to maximize creative output.
• Hours: Focus on effectiveness, not efficiency.
This is a guide for staying inspired and experiencing greater creative productivity than you ever imagined possible.
» Amazon
Personal productivity
This is nothing short of a game changing book when it comes to â€calm the fuck downâ€. David Allen has done his research on how we as humans (and our brains) work and presents simple practices that makes our lives easier and more stress-free.
The book is great, but really – I think that his presentation at Google says what needs to be said.
» See David Allens talk at Google
» Amazon.com
The pace of change is greater than ever. We all face new challenges every day in our jobs and in our personal lives. Those who can handle change are the most fulfilled. Those who fear change will find it hardest to thrive.
Change by Richard Gerver will give you all you need to understand change, to adapt to change, and to inspire others to do the same.
» Amazon
Om framgång, karriär och livets mening.
» See presentation at Webbdagarna 2014 (in Swedish)
» Bokus
This was the book that inspired me to work from New York for a week, and get stuff done, instead of being at the office in Gothenburg, with its constant interuptions. The book (in Swedish) talks about the importance of working where you are the most effective. If you need to go to New York, go to New York. Or to the cafe next to your office. But don’t buy into that â€work has to be done at the office†hype.
My week in New York also resulted in a Pecha Kucha talk and the Stendahls Creative Popup.
Seth Godin’s three essential questions for every marketer:
• “What’s your story?â€
• “Will the people who need to hear this story believe it?â€
• “Is it true?â€
All marketers tell stories. And if they do it right, we believe them. We believe that wine tastes better in a $20 glass than a $1 glass. We believe that an $80,000 Porsche is vastly superior to a $36,000 Volkswagen that’s virtually the same car. We believe that $125 sneakers make our feet feel better—and look cooler—than a $25 brand. And believing it makes it true.
A book packed on the importance of lateral thinking – and lots of tips on how to get there.