Hasta La Ideas

It’s always interesting to take a look back at a year’s worth of books, particularly from an industry still reeling from assaults to its very existence. This year, certain clear themes emerged from writers looking at the worlds of innovation and design.

Most clearly, we have entered the age of the individual. Emphasizing every person’s ability to have an effect or make a difference was a theme touched on by many. The importance of cross-disciplinary innovation was another, with many outlining the powerful idea that innovation simply won’t emerge from staring into a world you already know inside and out.

And even while many admitted that there are no easy answers to our time of global turmoil, there was an overarching sense of optimism too. Perhaps that’s not entirely surprising–after all, who’s going to buy a book in which an author stacks up the depressing evidence that we’re doomed, doomed? But the cumulative effect was also somewhat inspiring.

Finally, this year’s award for the Innovation Author’s Preferred Hero of Choice goes to…. Johannes Guttenberg. Yes, some 560 years after the introduction of the printing press, it turns out that citing the German goldsmith is still seen as the best way to back up a theory about innovation.

Here then, in no particular order, are eleven books that made me stop and think this year.

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