Book recommendations for the winter of 2022/23
At SSE Executive Education, we provide organizations and their leaders with new knowledge, new ways of thinking and new tools to successfully drive their organizations into the future. For the new year, we’re sharing our recommendations for books that will inspire and challenge ideas, habits and perspectives.
All of us at SSE Executive Education wish you a happy, healthy and literary winter!
PURPOSE + PROFIT
Author: George Serafeim
Recommended by: Mattias Axelson, PhD, research fellow at House of Innovation at the Stockholm School of Economics, and program director at SSE Executive Education.
“The climate crisis represents the greatest challenge of our time. A warming planet coupled with other sustainability challenges means that the world as we know it is quickly disappearing. If there is one thing that is clear, it is that every one of us has a responsibility to rethink and change our behaviors. Continuing as we always have is hardly a recipe for success, and that is especially true for our established companies.
George Serafeim at the Harvard Business School has searched for companies that have been pioneers and shown the way towards a more sustainable future, and he’s found quite a few. In his book Purpose + Profit, he puts research to practice and explains how companies can help to achieve a better future. He doesn’t say that companies need to stop working for profitability and growth, just that work needs to be rooted in a higher purpose — a purpose where a company’s impact and contribution to stakeholders in the larger global context serve as a North Star in its business decisions.
He paints a bird’s-eye view of this new landscape where companies build business around the dual objectives of ‘Purpose + Profit’. Given that the proposed approach is in the development of the company as a whole, Serafeim focuses heavily on business strategy issues. Additionally, the book contains a number of illustrative examples and conceptual models that give the reader practical insights. For executive leadership teams, this book can serve as inspiration to find a more sustainable direction for their company. For people within an organization, this book provides a foundation upon which operational solutions can be developed.
Throughout the year, I’ve met many leaders in companies that are grappling with the question of how their business will look when it is truly sustainable — because it is not a question of if, it is a question of how. Anyone wanting to use their holiday break to think about the future and learn how they can take ownership of creating a more sustainable world will find the perfect jumping-off point in George Serafeim’s book, Purpose + Profit.”
THE VALUE OF EVERYTHING
– MAKING AND TAKING IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY
Author: Mariana Mazzucato
Recommended by: Annachiara Torciano, Executive in Residence at SSE Executive Education
“Mariana Mazzucato is an established economist who has written extensively. In this book she draws from economic history and data to argue that the way we define economic value today is a construct and wrong. It does not consider social and environmental value and it even implies that economic value is created while it is not. If economic value is a concept not a fact, then those of us who want to make the world a better place should not be afraid of finding new ways of measuring it.”
THERE IS NO BIGGER PRIORITY THAN FIGHTING CLIMATE CHANGE: THE RATIONAL CASE
“Climate change is about people and terrible things will happen to people and our societies if we do not make it a priority to act now. Two reports are a must read.
- The first is the UN’s IPCC report from February 2022. The report is dense but the fact sheets are clear, pointing for example at lower food production and higher water scarcity in Europe, and big negative impacts on health and malnutrition in Africa.
- The second, Future of the human climate niche, is a punch in the stomach. Over the coming 50 years, 1 to 3 billion people are projected to be left outside the liveable climate conditions.
Europe will face migration pressures from our neighbouring continents, with risks to human lives as well as unprecedented challenges for our political system and democracy.
The message from science is – the next few years are crucial, we know what we need to do, many of the solutions are there and some are even better than what we had before. We just need to do it now.”
THE EZRA KLEIN SHOW – FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES
“Ezra Klein interviews leading thinkers from very different fields. What they all have in common is a unique and provocative perspective on big issues, and they are real experts in their areas. Ezra is a master at asking questions that lead to surprising thoughts. Food for the mind.
Two among the episodes I enjoyed the most: how we should understand the new world Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has thrown us in and a cultural perspective on the rise of the far right across Western countries.
Try for yourself – there will be something just for you there!”
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