strategy+business's Best Books of 2014

If you're a regular 800-CEO-READ reader or follower, you know that we always look forward to strategy+business revealing their picks for best business books of the year, in part because the s+b list is decidedly different than most other lists. Their categories often change to reflect the most important business topics of the year, and instead of relying solely on an internal editorial team to choose the winners, they reach out to experts in each category's field. But what we most appreciate in the s-b list is that each book is accompanied by an essay explaining the the book's importance. Lists tell us something. Lists combined with hundreds of words of copy tell us even more. This year's categories are Strategy, Marketing, Executive Self-Improvement, Organizational Culture, Innovation, Sustainability, and Economics. Choosing the best Strategy books, Strategy& senior partner Ken Favaro "picks the three books that offer new thinking about strategy that is practical and compelling."

• Business Strategy: Managing Uncertainty, Opportunity, and Enterprise by J.C. Spender, Oxford University Press
• Fewer, Bigger, Bolder: From Mindless Expansion to Focused Growth by Sanjay Khosla and Mohanbir Sawhney, Portfolio
• Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for a Faster-Moving World by John P. Kotter, Harvard Business Review Press

Marketing expert Catharine Taylor focuses on books that get straight to the heart of brand experience in picking her Marketing winners.

• Tilt: Shifting Your Strategy from Products to Customers by Niraj Dawar, Harvard Business Review Press
• Connected by Design: 7 Principles for Business Transformation through Functional Integration by Barry Wacksman and Chris Stutzman, Jossey-Bass
• Romancing the Brand: How Brands Create Strong, Intimate Relationships with Consumers by Tim Halloran, Jossey-Bass

Specifically targeted at executive decision making (with or without an assist from big data), Karen Dillon (co-author of How Will You Measure Your Life) selects the Executive Self-Improvement winners.

• Left Brain, Right Stuff: How Leaders Make Winning Decisions by Phil Rozenzweig, PublicAffairs
• The Moment of Clarity: Using the Human Sciences to Solve Your Toughest Business Problems Christian Madsbjerg and Mikkel B. Rasmussen, Harvard Business Review Press
• It's Not the How or the What but the Who: Succeed by Surrounding Yourself with the Best by Claudio Fernndez-Aroz, Harvard Business Review Press

Covering Organizational Culture, distinguished author of a number of business books James O'Toole selects books from the field he has helped shape.

• Joy, Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People Love by Richard Sheridan, Portfolio
• The Moment You Can't Ignore: When Big Trouble Leads to a Great Future by Malachi O'Connor and Barry Dornfeld, PublicAffairs
• The Circle, by Dave Eggers, Knopf

Longtime s-b business book reviewer David Hurst tackles Innovation, picking the books that go beyond the how-to of innovation by discussing how tech is "driving innovation in every sphere of our lives."

• The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, W.W. Norton
• Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread—The Lessons from a New Science by Alex Pentland, Penguin Press
• How Google Works, by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg, with Alan Eagle, Business Plus

John Elkington, author of another 2014 book, The Break-Through Challenge, was tabbed to select books in the category so close to his heart - Sustainability.

• Responsible Leadership: Lessons from the Front Line of Sustainability and Ethics, by Mark Moody-Stuart, Greenleaf
• How the Poor Can Save Capitalism: Rebuilding the Path to the Middle Class, by John Hope Bryant, Berrett Koehler
• The Big Pivot: Radically Practical Strategies for a Hotter, Scarcer, and More Open World, by Andrew Winston, Harvard Business Review Press

And finally, economic columnist (Slate, The Daily Beast) and author of Better, Stronger, Faster: The Myth of American Decline and the Rise of a New Economy, Daniel Gross chooses the best book in Economics.

• Capital in the 21st Century, by Thomas Piketty, Belknap Press
• Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, by Evan Osnos, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises, Timothy Geithner, Crown

The overall winners of the categories, s+b's top shelf, were:

We've been following this list since 2003. You can browse strategy + business's previous picks below.

2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013