Insights / All Leadership / Article

9 Must-Read Business Books for 2024

By Ava McCartney | 4-minute read | December 11, 2023

Big Picture

Gartner experts share the business books that have influenced their thinking

Regardless of your role or function, as a business leader, you come to Gartner for actionable, objective insights that ground your thinking, provide foresight and help you make smarter, faster decisions. Our team of experts powers these insights.

With our annual list of best business books, Gartner experts offer something a little more personal: Their recommendations for reads that have recently challenged or shaped the way they think about their professional and personal lives. Each comes with a note highlighting its value to you as a leader and individual.

Download Now: Key Actions to Level Up Your Leadership in 2024

“The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor and Power in the Age of Automation” by Carl Benedikt Frey

  • Recommended by: Helen Poitevin, Distinguished VP Analyst, Human Capital Management

  • Why she suggests it: “This is a fine analysis of the impact of technology on work by one of the economists who kicked off the firestorm of interest in the impact of AI on work in 2013. ‘The Technology Trap’ offers an updated view and a historical overview of the impact of automation on different groups of workers.”

“Analog” by Robert Hassan

  • Recommended by: Chris Howard, Global Chief of Research

  • Why he suggests it: “ ‘Analog’ explores our desire for ‘real’ experiences in the midst of the current digital deluge. But Hassan also points out that one era’s innovation is often the next’s ‘real’ experience.”

“The Art of the Good Life: Clear Thinking for Business and a Better Life” by Rolf Dobelli

  • Recommended by: Mbula Schoen, Senior Director Analyst, CIO Leadership of Information Talent & Organizational Dynamics

  • Why she suggests it: “Dobelli explores the stoic philosophy and its applicability in today’s world. He takes the liberty also to borrow from Daniel Kahneman but writes in a light and often very witty style.”

“American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin

  • Recommended by: Jorge Lopez, Distinguished VP Analyst, Digital Business

  • Why he suggests it: “This book provides a deep dive into the personality of J. Robert Oppenheimer, a man of genius intellect, who was able to gather together other geniuses of his time — Einstein, Born, Bohr, Fermi, DeBroglie, Teller and more — and get these very independent intellectuals to focus on designing and building the atomic bomb. For the aspirational leader, this is a very inspirational as well as down-to-earth description of the joys and the despair of pursuing enormous goals with the best minds.”

“Scale: The Universal Laws of Life, Growth, and Death in Organisms, Cities, and Companies” by Geoffrey West

  • Recommended by: Rita Sallam, Distinguished VP Analyst, Data & Analytics 

  • Why she suggests it: “West gives fascinating examples of the laws that drive the life cycle of all things, including companies. It’s full of great insight on how things scale and how to sustain success.”

“How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth” by Meg Bowles, Catherine Burns, et al.

  • Recommended by: Tori Paulman, Senior Director Analyst, Employee Experience Technology

  • Why they suggest it: “I think every single one of us should read (and reread) this book. I’ve used it to improve both my presentations and my relationships.”

“How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between” by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner

  • Recommended by: Andrew White, Distinguished VP Analyst, Data & Analytics

  • Why he suggests it: “Brilliant — and with a nice dose of large-scale IT projects included in the analysis. Every CIO and transformation lead should be aware of the findings in this book, which plays well with Gartner’s advice that ‘strategy is learning by doing.’ ”

“No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention” by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer

  • Recommended by: Gene Alvarez, Distinguished VP Analyst, Information Technology

  • Why he suggests it: “This book made me think about these questions: Why do we have so many rules to run companies and this one succeeded by not having any? Is there such a thing as too many rules? Give it a read and you may think twice before adding more rules to processes in your organization — and how you hire.”

“The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward” by Daniel H. Pink

  • Recommended by: Don Scheibenreif, Distinguished VP Analyst, Customer Experience

  • Why he suggests it: “Pink gets you to view regret as something that can help you move forward, instead of backward. I found his advice to be helpful at home and at work.”

3 things to tell your peers

1

This list of best business books for 2024 is sourced from Gartner experts, who explain why each book proved meaningful to them.

2

These nine reads are designed to guide leaders professionally and personally, understanding that there is significant overlap between these two parts of your life.

3

The books cover such topics as technological progress, storytelling and business transformation.

Share this article

Helen Poitevin is a Distinguished VP Analyst in the Gartner HR Practice with a focus on HR technologies. She advises clients on their HR technology strategies, with an emphasis on AI and generative AI, talent analytics, voice of the employee analytics, and workforce planning. Helen also conducts research on the future of work and the impact of technology on how people will work, the gig economy, talent marketplaces and ecosystems and future talent practices.

Chris Howard is Gartner's Chief of Research. In that role, Mr. Howard ensures that Gartner research meets the general and industry-specific needs of senior executives, with emphasis on both technical and business leadership. Mr. Howard leads the Senior Content Leadership Board at Gartner where he is responsible for the development of integrated topics that cross all of Gartner's research. In that capacity, he regularly interacts with and advises CEOs, board members and other senior executives at the world's largest enterprises. He is the recipient of several Gartner thought leadership awards.

Mbula Schoen is a Senior Director Analyst with Gartner's CIO Leadership of Information Talent & Organizational Dynamics team. Ms. Schoen's expertise focuses on the future of work, talent management, upskilling the IT workforce, Employment Value Proposition (EVP), IT talent attraction and attrition drivers Ms. Schoen is a sought-after speaker and brings more than 20 years of experience working with global companies in Asia, Eastern and Western Europe, and Africa. In addition to her work at Gartner, Ms. Schoen is a visiting professor at a Munich University, where she lectures in management information systems

Jorge Lopez is a Vice President and Distinguished Analyst based in the United States, where he leads research of the Gartner research theme of the industrialization of space. He also is a leader in the global theme and research agenda of digital business. This includes advancing the research of the theme and managing its delivery throughout Gartner. His target audience is the CIO, with emphasis on how to help the CIO engage the CEO and the board of directors on many issues of concern to business executives, including digital business. He draws on his prior research on board of directors, CEO and CIOs to advise Gartner clients on how best to leverage technology to generate business results.

Rita Sallam is a Distinguished VP analyst and Gartner Fellow in the Data and Analytics team. Mrs. Sallam's focus includes tracking market trends, vendor assessment and selection, and identifying best practices for realizing business value from data, analytics and AI investments. Of particular interest is how leaders can leverage disruptions in AI to create sustainable competitive advantage. She is also focused on building frameworks for selecting and valuing data and analytics portfolios including AI investments, including Generative AI.

Tori Paulman is a Research Analyst in Gartner's Employee Experience Technology team covering digital workplace leadership and strategy, digital employee experience, the workplace experience application market, strategies for hybrid work, and Gartner's 2022 digital worker experience research study. Prior to joining Gartner, Tori has extensive career experience as a leader of digital employee experience, technology adoption, and employee resilience. They offer differentiated depth and breadth of knowledge in industries ranging from software development, entertainment, higher education, financial services, retail, and professional services. Tori's focus is on ensuring that employees have a validating, supportive, and engaging experience with work. They help Gartner clients achieve their goals by sourcing and implementing the right combination of technologies, and applications, and cultural practices to ensure their employees are productive and happy at work. Tori is passionate about the importance of inclusion and facilitating opportunities for people to have positive interactions with technology that makes their work, and lives, better. Tori has spent more than 25 years in IT roles cultivating an empathetic IT methodology which seeks to balance the narrative that so often focuses on the adoption of new tools and drives the conversation back to the most valuable asset of your organization, people. Their work centers on the human experience, because they believe that fostering innovative performance requires that Digital Workplace programs must be focused on something deeper than user experience, they must be focused on the human experience. Years of Experience: - 2021 beginning at Gartner - 25 years in IT industry - 7 Years Financial Services - 7 Years Entertainment - 6 Years Retail - 5 Years Professional Services for Non-Profit and Higher - 1 Year Software Development, specifically BPM

Andrew White, distinguished Analyst and VP, has a primary research focus on the chief data and analytics officer (CDAO) role and responsibility. This includes data and analytics strategy, governance, organization and roles, business value of data and analytics and so on. Andrew is also the Chief of Research, China, where he oversees the research plan for China. He is also the Key Initiative Leader for Data and Analytics for Executive Leaders. Andrew has held several other roles including Role-Based Research Product Lead, where he helped bring the new CDAO product to market. Before this he was the Chief of Research for Data and Analytics. He has also been Vendor Lead for Oracle Corp. He was the Research leader behind the first ever Master Data Management Summit in 2007, and was conference chair of that event through 2015 as it expanded focus to enterprise information management, and then merged with our Analytics and BI conference to create Data and Analytics. Mr. White has been the recipient of the Gartner Thought Leadership Award. The first was in 2006 for his efforts in pioneering Gartner's research in Enterprise Information Management that led to MDM. More recently in 2020 he received the award for his contribution to Data Fabric research. Mr. White's previous coverage areas focused on business applications and best practices in supply chain management (SCM), enterprise resource planning (ERP) and multienterprise B2B collaboration environments.

Gene Alvarez helps clients with their vision, strategy, business models for topics such as Composable Business, Composable Applications, Composable CRM, The Future of Applications Applications Modernization, CRM, Customer Experience, and Digital Commerce Technologies. This includes topics such as CRM, Customer Experience Management, Customer Technology Platforms, Customer Engagement Hub, Customer Journey Mapping, digital business platforms, cloud, SaaS, and Digital Commerce technologies. Mr. Alvarez has over 35 years of business and IT experience. He has led business impact assessments, vendor management, project management, software development and delivery of complex business applications. He is an international expert on the future of applications, composable business and sell-side strategies and technologies, such as Customer Engagement Hub, CRM, and customer experience, digital commerce, e-commerce and m-commerce and sales applications. In 2019, the Hispanic IT Executive Council inducted Mr. Alvarez into their Hall of Fame. (https://hitecglobal.org/page/HITECHallofFame). He has received the Top 200 Influential Hispanics in Technology "HE&IT TOP 200" Award from Hispanic Engineer & Information Technology Magazine. He is a recognized authority on retail and consumer packaged goods industry applications and practices. Mr. Alvarez has spoken at many international events and industry-related conferences worldwide and has published/referenced/featured in various media and trade publications. Prior to joining Gartner, he held positions with Nine West Group, KPMG Peat Marwick, New York Power Authority and AT&T Communications.

Don Scheibenreif is a Vice President, Distinguished Analyst with Gartner's Customer Experience research group. Mr. Scheibenreif works with customer experience and IT leaders on how emerging trends and digital business will impact customer experience. He is a founding member of Gartner's research on digital business and digital business transformation and he has served clients in Gartner's Industries Research and Technology Innovation practices.

For More Insights

The 5 Pillars of Successful Strategy Execution

Make Sure Strategy Considers Trends Only Just Emerging

Lead Through Volatility With Adaptive Strategy

3 Critical Areas to Drive Corporate Growth in 2024

Drive stronger performance on your mission-critical priorities.