8 Must-Read Books to Kick Off 2024

Influenced by topics from discussions with our clients, here are a few books we're reading to kick-off our year of innovation, design, and leadership.

Read these books, reflect on them, and try them out in the real world, learn from this, and share share share. All the best for the start of 2024!

Most books on innovation tend to read like 'how-to' books. Rather than detailing a specific recipe for innovation, Dr Karamuftuoglu's Rowdy Entrepreneurs and Insecure Dinosaurs provides ideas that foster an innovative mindset, and shows how innovation touches social culture.

We all have a default tendency to add to what's there and make things more complex. The underlying assumption being that more is better. Leidy Klotz offers the idea that an alternative to this is to subtract and aim for simplification. In essence, getting to less in order to achieve more.

Design isn't just about products and services--you can also (and should) adopt a design thinking mindset to your life. Bill Burnett and Dave Evans provide a roadmap with practical exercises that can help you explore new life goal avenues or dig in deeper on opportunities you've already identified.

Considered as one of the founders of Universal Design and the Mother of Empathy, Pat Moore's book chronicles her fieldwork findings as she disguised herself as an elderly lady going about her daily life. Her conclusion, designers were mainly interested in designing for themselves. It's out of print, but still readily available.

Leo Tolstoy's tells the story of a dying Ivan Ilyich who wanted to be comforted and pitied, but was confronted with doctors who only cared about providing treatment and cure. It brings into perspective present clinical approaches, where our mortality is essentially turned into a medical experience.

Sure, this has nothing to do with aged care. However, if you want to see disruption happening right now, the unresolved PGA-LIV saga in professional golf is an interesting case to follow. Alan Shipnuck's LIV and Let Die chronicles what's happened to date, giving equal billing to disruptors and defenders.

Great service cannot happen if organisations write cheques their employees can't cash. Monique Richardson's book gives a constructive synthesis between customer-first and employee-first perspectives. She makes a compelling case that happy employees lead to happy customers, and in turn, business success.

Bec Wilson's book on retirement planning, delivers exactly what it says on the cover. For intrepid age services entrepreneurs, her advice might give rise to a few smart business ideas. After all, business creation done well can lead to an 'epic retirement' in its own right.