The Best Business Books Of 2017 | Non-Obvious Book Award Winners

What were the best business books of 2017?

For my team, trying to answer this question is a year long obsession that takes us through several hundred books as part of our annual research into trends and new ideas to fuel the predictions in our own book that comes out every December all about trends.

Today I’m happy to announce our selections for the Non-Obvious Business Book Awards – including 15 Long List selections, another 15 Short List selections and finally five category winners.

Here’s a snapshot of all the books that were selected this year:

Here are our selections for the best books of the year, in our five core categories:

1. Most Important Business Book Of 2017 – Give Work by Leila Janah
2. Most Original Business Book Of 2017 – Win Bigly by Scott Adams
3. Most Entertaining Business Book Of 2017 – 50 Inventions That Changed The Modern Economy by Tim Harford
4. Most Useful Business Book Of 2017 – Exactly What To Say by Phil Jones
5. Most Shareable Business Book Of 2017 – Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella

And here are ALL the books that we selected this year (listed alphabetically by author name):

Non-Obvious Book Awards: Shortlist Selections

• Win Bigly – Scott Adams
• Disrupt! – James Bidwell 
• Entrepreneurial You – Dorie Clark
• Your Ad Ignored Here – Tom Fishburne
• 50 Inventions That Changed The Modern Economy – Tim Harford
• Power of Moments – Chip + Dan Heath
• Give Work – Leila Janah
• Exactly What To Say – Phil Jones
• The Unmade Bed – Stephen Marche
• Hit Refresh – Satya Nadella
• Grocery – Michael Ruhlman
• How To Be A Bawse – Lilly Singh
• Unleashing The Innovators – Jim Stengel
• Hit Makers – Derek Thompson
• No Ego – Cy Wakeman

Non-Obvious Book Awards: Longlist Selections

• Finish – Jon Acuff
• Dollars and Sense – Dan Ariely and Jeff Kreisler
• Barking Up The Wrong Tree – Eric Barker
• All These Wonders – Catherine Burns
• The Business of Persuasion – Harold Burson
• How To Think – Alan Jacobs
• Trust Rules – Bob Lee
• The Power of Onlyness – Nilofer Merchant
• Reset – Ellen Pao
• The Infidel and the Professor – Dennis C. Rasmussen
• Radical Candor – Kim Scott
• The Art of Stopping Time – Pedram Shojai
• Everybody Lies – Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
• The Grid – Matt Watkinson
• Bored and Brilliant – Manoush Zomorodi

Any of your favorite reads from this past year that we missed? Let me know in the comments.