Good ideas have many origins. They usually spring from other good ideas that recombine to create new, and often unexpected insights. Therefore, if you enjoy this blog, that’s owed to many writers and thinkers who enriched my own perspective on innovation at the intersection of technology, business, and society.

The following list presents an overview of the key sources that I drew inspiration from; mainly books, but a few essays, articles, videos and, yes, graphic novels as well. Quite naturally, this overview will grow over time as the journey unfolds and new inspirations arise.

^{[Last Update – 17 August 2023]}

A

Acemoglu, Daron ; and Robinson, James – Why Nations Fail? – The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty – Crown Business – 2012.

Anderson, Chris – Makers: The New Industrial Revolution – Crown Business – 2012.

Arthur, W. Brian – The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves – Free Press – 2009.

Arthur, W. Brian – The second economy – McKinsey Quarterly – October 2011.

Arthur, W. Brian – Where is technology taking the economy? – McKinsey Quarterly – October 2017.

Avent, Ryan – The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-First Century – St. Martin’s Press – 2016.

B

Baldwin, Richard – The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization – Harvard University Press – 2016.

Baldwin, Richard – The Globotics Upheaval: Globalization, Robotics, and the Future of Work – Oxford University Press – 2019.

Bridle, James – Ways of Being: Beyond Human Intelligence – Penguin – 2022.

Brockman, John (Ed.) – Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI – Penguin Press – 2019.

C

Calvo, Paco – Planta Sapiens: Unmasking Plant Intelligence – The Bridge Street Press – 2022.

Chollet, François – The Implausability of Intelligence Explosion – Medium.com – 27 November 2017.

Christensen, Clayton – A Theory of Economic Growth – Clarendon Lecture, held at Saïd Business School, Oxford – 10 June 2013.

Christian, Brian – The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values – W. W. Norton & Company – 2020.

Clark, Andy – The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality – Pantheon – 2023.

Collingridge, David – The Social Control of Technology – Palgrave Macmillan – 1980.

D

Damasio, Antonio – Feeling & Knowing: Making Minds Conscious – Pantheon – 2021.

Daub, Adrian – What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley – FSG Originals – 2020.

Davidson, Adam – Welcome to the Failure Age – New York Times Magazine – 12 November 2014.

Dunn, Rob – A Natural History of the Future: What the Laws of Biology Tell Us About the Destiny of the Human Species – Basic Books – 2021.

E

Eagleman, David ; and Brandt, Anthony – The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World – Catapult – 2017.

F

Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe – Out of Our Minds: What We Think and How We Came to Think It – University of California Press – 2019.

Ford, Martin – The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future – CreativeSpace – 2009.

Frey, Carl Benedikt – The Technology Trap: Capital, Labour, and Power in the Age of Automation – Princeton University Press – 2019.

Frith, Uta ; Frith, Chris ; Frith, Alex ; and Locke, Daniel – Two Heads: A Graphic Exploration of How Our Brains Work with Other Brains – Scribner – 2022.

Fry, Hannah – Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine – W. W. Norton & Company – 2018.

G

Gell-Mann, Murray – The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex – St. Martin’s Griffin – 1995.

Godfrey-Smith, Peter – Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind – Farrar, Straus & Giroux – 2020.

Goldberg, Elkhonon – Creativity: The Human Brain in the Age of Innovation – Oxford University Press – 2018.

Goldfarb, Brent ; and Kirsch, David A. – Bubbles and Crashes: The Boom and Bust of Technological Innovation – Stanford University Press – 2019.

Graeber, David ; and Wengrow, David – The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity – Farrar, Straus & Giroux – 2021.

Greenfield, Adam – Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life – Verso – 2017.

Gunderson, Lance ; and Holling, Crawford S.; (Eds.) – Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems – Island Press – 2001.

H

Haass, Richard – The World: A Brief Introduction – Penguin Press – 2020.

Harari, Yuval ; Vandermeulen, David ; and Casanave, Daniel – Sapiens – A Graphic History: The Birth of Humankind (Vol. 1) – Harper Perennial – 2020.

Harari, Yuval ; Vandermeulen, David ; and Casanave, Daniel – Sapiens – A Graphic History: The Pillars of Civilization (Vol. 2) – Harper Perennial – 2021.

Haskel, Jonathan ; and Westlake, Stian – Capitalism without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy – Princeton University Press – 2017.

Hawkins, Jeff – A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence – Basic Books – 2021.

Henrich, Joseph – The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous – Farrar, Straus & Giroux –  2020.

Homer-Dixon, Thomas – The Ingenuity Gap: Facing the Economic, Environmental, and Other Challenges of an Increasingly Complex and Unpredictable World – Knopf – 2000.

Homer-Dixon, Thomas – The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization – Island Press – 2006.

Hustvedt, Siri – The Delusions of Certainty – Simon & Schuster – 2017.

I

Ishiguro, Kazuo – Klara and the Sun – Knopf – 2021.

Iversen, Torben ; and Soskice, David – Democracy and Prosperity: Reinventing Capitalism through a Turbulent Century – Princeton University Press – 2019.

J

Jacobs, Jane – The Nature of Economies – Vintage Books – 2000.

Johnson, Steven – Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software – Scribner – 2001.

Johnson, Steven – Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation – Riverhead Books – 2010.

K

Kahneman, Daniel – Thinking, Fast and Slow – Farrar, Straus & Giroux –  2011.

Kauffman, Stuart A. – A World Beyond Physics: The Emergence & Evolution of Life – Oxford University Press – 2019.

Keynes, John Maynard – The Economy Possibilities of Our Grandchildren – 1930 – published in Essays in Persuasion, W. W. Norton & Co., 1963

Kissinger, Henry A. – How the Enlightenment Ends – The Atlantic – June 2018 issue.

Kissinger, Henry A. ; Schmidt, Eric ; and Huttenlocher, Daniel – The Age of AI: And Our Human Future – Little, Brown and Company – 2021.

Klein, Gary – Seeing What Others Don’t: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights – PublicAffairs – 2013.

Knoll, Andrew H. – A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters – Custom House – 2021.

Kuhn, Thomas S. – The Structure of Scientific Revolutions – University of Chicago Press – 1962.

L

Larson, Erik J. – The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can’t Think the Way We Do – Belknapp Press – 2021.

LeDoux, Joseph – The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains – Viking – 2019.

Lee, Kai-Fu ; Qiufan, Chen – AI 2041: Ten Visions of Our Future – Currency – 2021.

Lent, Jeremy – The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning – Prometheus – 2017.

Lightman, Alan – Probable Impossibilities: Musings about Beginnings and Ends – Pantheon – 2021.

M

Mancuso, Stefano – The Revolutionary Genius of Plants: A New Understanding of Plant Intelligence and Behaviour – Atria Books – 2018.

Marletto, Chiara – The Science of Can and Can’t: A Physicist’s Journey Through the Land of Counterfactuals – Penguin – 2021.

Marshall, Tim – Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World – Scribner – 2015.

Mazzucato, Mariana – The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy – PublicAffairs – 2018.

McCarthy, Cormac – The Passenger – Knopf – 2022.

McCarthy, Cormac – Stella Maris – Knopf – 2022.

McGilchrist, Iain – The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World – Yale University Press – 2019.

Mercier, Hugo ; and Sperber, Dan – The Enigma of Reason: A New Theory of Human Understanding – Penguin – 2017.

Mitchell, Melanie – Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans – Farrar, Straus & Giroux – 2019.

Mokyr, Joel – The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress – Oxford University Press – 1990.

Mokyr, Joel – A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy – Princeton University Press – 2016.

Morris, Ian – Why the West Rules – For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal about the Future – Farrar, Straus & Giroux – 2010.

Morris, Ian – Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve – Princeton University Press – 2015.

Mullaney, Thomas S. ; Peters, Benjamin ; Hicks, Mar ; and Philip, Kavita (Eds.) – Your Computer Is on Fire – The MIT Press – 2021.

N

Nicolesis, Miguel – The True Creator of Everything: How the Human Brain Shaped the Universe as We Know It – Yale University Press – 2020.

Nielsen, Michael – Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science – Princeton University Press – 2012.

Norberg, Johan – Open: The History of Human Progress – How Collaboration and Curiosity Shaped Humankind – Atlantic Books – 2020.

O

Ogas, Ogi ; and Gaddam, Sai – The Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos – W. W. Norton & Company – 2022.

P

Padua, Sydney – The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer – Pantheon – 2015.

Pearl, Judea ; and Mackenzie, Dana – The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect – Basic Books – 2018.

Perez, Carlota – Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages – Edward Elgar Publishing – 2002.

Postrel, Virginia – The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress – Free Press – 1998.

R

Reber, Arthur S. – The First Minds: Caterpillars, ‘karyots & Consciousness – Oxford University Press – 2018.

Roam, Dan – Blah Blah Blah: What to Do When Words Don’t Work – Portfolio – 2011.

Roberts, Simon – The Power of Not Thinking: How Our Bodies Learn and Why We Should Trust Them – Rowman & Littlefield Publishers – 2022.

Rosling, Hans ; Rosling Rönnlund, Anna ; and Rosling, Ola – Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About The World – And Why Things Are Better Than You Think – Flatiron Books – 2018.

Russell, Bertrand – In Praise of Idleness – Harper’s Magazine – 1932.

S

Sachs, Jeffrey D. – The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions – Columbia University Press – 2020.

Seth, Anil – Being You: A New Science of Consciousness – Dutton – 2021.

Sharpe, Bill – Three Horizons: The Patterning of Hope – Triarchy Press – 2013.

Sheldrake, Merlin – Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures – Random House – 2020.

Smith, Justin E.H. – Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason – Princeton University Press – 2019.

Smith, Karl – Economic Growth in the Age of Diminishing Labor – Online Forum of the Cato Institute – November 2014.

Snowden, Dave – Cynefin Foundations – Cognitive Edge – 2018.

Snowden, Dave – Cynefin: Weaving Sense-Making into the Fabric of Our World – Cognitive Edge Pte Ltd – 2020.

Solms, Mark – The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness – Profile Books – 2021.

Sousanis, Nick – Unflattening – Harvard University Press – 2015.

Stephan, Paula – How Economics Shapes Science – Harvard University Press – 2012.

Stiglitz, Joseph E. – People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent – W. W. Norton & Company – 2019.

Strevens, Michael – The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science – Liveright – 2020.

Susskind, Daniel – A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond – Metropolitan Books – 2020.

Suzman, James – Work: A Deep History, From the Stone Age to the Age of Robots – Penguin Press – 2021.

T

Tainter, Joseph A. – The Collapse of Complex Societies – Cambridge University Press – 1988.

Taylor, Mark Zachary – The Politics of Innovation: Why Some Countries Are Better Than Others at Science & Technology – Oxford University Press – 2016.

Templin, Grandin – Visual Thinkers: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions – Riverhead Books – 2022.

Thompson, Derek – A World without Work – The Atlantic – July/August 2015 issue.

Tononi, Giulio – Phi: A Journey from the Brain to the Soul – Pantheon – 2012.

W

Wagner, Andreas – Life Finds a Way: What Evolution Teaches Us about Creativity – Basic Books – 2019.

Ward, Jacob – The Loop: How Technology is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back – Hachette Books – 2022.

West, Geoffrey – Why Cities Keep Growing, Corporations and People Always Die, and Life Gets Faster – The Edge – November 2011.

West, Geoffrey – Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies  – Penguin Press – 2017.

Wolfram, Stephen – On the Quest for Computable Knowledge – Wolfram Media Inc. – 2017.

Wu, Tim – The Masterswitch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires – Vintage  –  2011.

Wulf, Andrea – The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World – Alfred A. Knopf – 2015.

Y

Yu, Liya – Vulnerable Minds: The Neuropolitics of Divided Societies – Columbia University Press – 2022.

Yunkaporta, Tyson – Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World – HarperOne – 2020.