Anthony M. Townsend
Ghost Road: Beyond the Driverless Car (Norton, 2020)
Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer
No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention (Penguin Press, 2020)
Stefan H. Thomke
Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments (Harvard Business Review Press, 2020)
*A TOP SHELF PICK
Stories of technological innovation often focus on singular, heroic visionaries — the Steve Jobses and Elon Musks of the world — who come up with brilliant, fully formed ideas and then shepherd them into reality, never wavering in their quest for perfection. But more often than not, the true story of technology and innovation is messy, rather than clean, a story of failures that only eventually lead to success. “Failure and invention are inseparable twins,” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has said. This year’s best business books about technology and innovation describe, and even celebrate, the messiness and uncertainty. In so doing,