strategy + business's Best Business Books 2011

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.

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