The Smorgasbord 250 lists the very best business and ‘smart thinking’ books published in the twenty-first century, probably. Out first listing is in ‘BETA’ mode, but we will refine as we go. The list is created using a complex algorithm, which calculates a book’s ranking, based on different dimensions, each sourced from regularly updated data feeds, public listings, new release reviews and recent prestigious awards. Where a book is brand new and already shown listed in the 250, it means its inclusion is purely an ‘editorial’ decision, and the book will be marked [“new”] as such.
1. Annual Listings and Ratings – The FT/McKinsey (previously Goldman) Shortlist and Winners since 2005, and other notable listings including the New York Times, The Sunday Times, The Economist, Business Week, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal books of the year.
2. Readership – Book sale numbers, where available from Nielson, as well as Amazon listings, Waterstones, Sunday Times/NYT bestseller listings. We also look beyond the bookshelf at the broader social media impact of the titles and its author, including Linked-In Influencer status, YouTube views, the online personal following of the author, etc. Sometimes the ‘cross over’ is extraordinary (for example, Michael Lewis with The Big Short and Moneyball, both adapted into Hollywood Movies, and Simon Sinek, a huge YouTube hit before Start With Why was even published).
3. Smarts: For the more ‘academic’ type of book – often based on original research, we take note of the Thinkers 50 Listings and other Guru listings, but the value that trumps them all is the Smorgasbord rating; which means, we’ve read it, loved it and recommended it to others. It’s an editorial call, but it can seriously slant the ranking, which is why you will see Hugh McLeod, David Rowan and Jonas Riddlestrale included in the lists, and Schlender and Tetzel’s biography of Steve Jobs, but not Walter Isaacson’s best-selling, but rather colder playback of Jobs’ life.
Finally, we have excluded pretty much any book published before 2000. There are, of course, some popular classics, like In Search of Excellence, 7 Habits, Who Moved My Cheese and How to Win Friends and Influence People, that you might expect to see in a listing like this, but we feel the world has moved on and that authors like Cal Newport, Peter Hinssen, Adam Grant and Erin Meyer have an outlook which is framed in a post-digital age and a more open and diverse world.
We have broadly aimed to capture business books, ‘smart thinking’ and ‘thought-leadership’ but we have excluded some titles around personal financial/investment advice like the hugely popular Rich Dad Poor Dad type guides and some other new-age personal-psychology mumbo jumbo, filters the very many personal ‘uber productivity’ manuals, as well as anything by Yuval Noah Harari, which we found unreadable. Well – that’s the Smorgasbord!
So what do you think?
You can ignore us, disagree with us, but you surely can’t dismiss the sheer marvel of delights being served up by these brilliant thinkers, writers, journalists and researchers, who are re-shaping the way we see business and the world around us. Read any of the top 50 or so and you are bound to pay it forward to a friend, family member, or a colleague. Read any of the top 250 and you will be in seriously discerning company and will at least have been guided away from several thousand other Airport books that are not as good. If we have not included your book, or there is one we should read and include it in the next refresh of the listing, let us know.
Feast you mind. Dive in. Let us know what you think: info@waveyourarms.com
