2020 Reading List: Your next, best, “reading” roundup

As we welcome in the New Year, no doubt you have a few resolutions about how you want to inform your life and grow your career in the coming months—and often that involves being inspired by the right information at the right time.

It’s always a challenge to cut through the noise, but at the end of last year we asked our team to share the resources that have shaped their thinking and inspired their work.  Whether these recommendations are already old favorites for you or turn out to be hidden gems, there’s something for everyone here.

Be inspired!

• Stephen Redmond and Patrick Engelking recommend Factfulness, by Hans Rosling, which will have you coming away feeling better about the world.
• Our new CEO, Julie Sweet, offers her insights after the first 90 days on the job.
• One of Merim Becirovic’s all-time favorites is Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing.
• Several members of our team, including Melissa Summers, recommended Amy Cuddy’s Presence: Bringing your Boldest Self to your Biggest Challenges. Watch Amy’s Ted Talk on the same topic.
• Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant provides a terrific perspective and is Kristen Christensen’s recommendation.

Tune in to Tech:

• Tools and Weapons by Brad Smith comes highly recommended from both Jason Warnke and Tony Leraris.
• Both Jason and Tony also suggest The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age by David Sanger.
• Human + Machine by our own Paul Daugherty and Jim Wilson is always a favorite for many in our team.
• Read our latest Research on Future Systems which explores how to scale innovation and achieve full value.

Other recommended reading:

• Radical Candor by Kim Scott.
• Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio.
• Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb. 
• Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella.
• Data Visualisation: A Handbook for Data Driven Design (2nd Edition) by Andy Kirk. 
• Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McColloch.
• Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell.
• Artificial Intelligence: Everything you need to know about the coming AI by Michael Woodridge.
• Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine by Hannah Fry.
• Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O’Neil.
• How Charts Lie by Alberto Cairo. Read Stephen Redmond’s review here.

Pop on a podcast:

• Exponential View HBR Podcast
• AI in Industry
• This Week in Machine Learning and AI
• Data Stories
• More or Less

It’s great to see Accenture’s own content in this impressive list and I’m most grateful to every member of our team who took the time to share their recommendations.  I know there is a lot of rich learning we can take away from these suggestions. 

I hope this list inspires you and I look forward to catching up with you on any takeaways you’d like to share in the future.

Have a great—and well-informed—start to the new calendar year.