What books have inspired you to think differently this year? Yale Ventures asked members of the Yale innovation community to share their top recommendations from 2022.
 

Fatema Basrai 

Managing Director, Innovate Health Yale and Sustainable Health Initiative 

In a world focused on doing all the things all the time Essentialism by Greg McKeown helped me define my essential priorities and task. Choosing to be essential is vital for my personal and professional well-being. 

Stuart DeCew ’11 MBA MEM

Executive Director, Yale Center for Business and the Environment and Lecturer, Yale School of the Environment
 
Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant is incredibly readable and written by someone who is innately curious, humble and also brilliant. It blends professional insight, academic research, useful charts/frameworks and tangible actions to experiment with and test in your work.  In an environment where everyone is a world-class expert on something, it is really important to understand the limitations of our expertise, be aware of biases and blind spots that we have to overcome and find tools on how to stay curious and engaged in learning from the incredible folks around us. Adam also has bingeable podcast series called WorkLife.  He brings a lot his writing to life on that podcast is you prefer listening to reading.

Josh Geballe YC '97, MBA '02 

Managing Director, Yale Ventures 

Yale graduates have gone on to found thousands of world-changing companies. INSIGHTS: Reflections from 101 of Yale's Most Successful Entrepreneurs is full of short and inspiring stories and advice from some our most successful entrepreneurs.  It is packed full of wisdom, insight and humor. 

Startups for Good podcast: Yale alum, serial entrepreneur, and investor Miles Lasater skillfully interviews startup founders building high-growth, high-value ventures that aim to be a force for good. Guests include a wide range of founders of mission-driven companies, non-profits, investors and innovators. 

Grace Gerwe, YC ’25 

President, Yale Entrepreneurial Society 

I can't believe I didn't read Deep Work by Cap Newport sooner. It's a must for anyone that wants to maximize their creation of value; a reflection on how to be productive in our distraction-packed, email-based workforce. This helped me realize how to truly focus on a cognitively demanding task and on what to prioritize my time.  

Amy Kundrat ’21 MBA

Director of Innovation Community, Yale Ventures

The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson is science fiction about our dangerously warming planet that reads like nonfiction. This book will be relevant for generations to come as it underscores the importance of storytelling to help communicate about the climate crisis. As humans develop innovative technologies to mitigate the physical warming of our planet, we'll also need innovative communications tools, such as books like this, to help us achieve those goals.

Aishwarya Kuruttukulam ’22 MA

Environmental Innovation Fellow at the Yale Center for Business and Environment and the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale 

World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil: This enthralling read captures nature in its innate form as a metaphor for the human experience. Be it fireflies, peacocks, axolotls or touch-me-nots, each essay grounded my understanding of the different species that we share this planet with. Aimee’s poetic and lyrical style has made me go back to this book more often than once this year.  

Clare Leinweber 

Executive Director, Tsai CITY 

Build the Damn Thing: How to Start a Successful Business if You’re Not a Rich White Guy by Kathryn Finney: Kathyrn Finney is a Yale alum and entrepreneur who has written a compelling book about her experience as a Black woman founder, discussing with honesty the realities of her experience launching her business and then generalizing from that to elucidate for readers how to prepare for and approach their own entrepreneurial journeys. The book quickly became a bestseller. Finney has also launched Genius Guild to help address the inequities in access to capital and other resources for diverse founders. 

99% Invisible podcast: The podcast discusses a broad range of topics in design and architecture with a focus on “the thought that goes into the things we don’t think about”.  Roman Mars is the host and brings in a wide variety of guest hosts depending on the topic. It’s good storytelling, with a curious and lively approach to exploring everything from epic fails to creative successes with everything in between.  

Angela Maalouf ’24 MBA

Design and Marketing Associate, Roberts Innovation Fund, Yale School of Management (MBA 1st Year) 

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries  

I am recommending this book as it is an insightful strategic guide for aspiring entrepreneurs in terms of launching and managing a venture. The author highlights that agility is the cornerstone of their success.  

Casey R. Pickett ’11 MBA MEM

Planetary Solutions Project Director, Office of the Provost 

Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson may be the book that brought “collisional frequency” into the mainstream. Johnson traces seven big concepts that enable new ideas to come together, grow, spread, and impact the world.  It’s like a Malcolm Gladwell-style textbook for how to grow innovation within a place or organization.   

Claudia Reuter 

Director, Roberts Innovation Fund 

I would like to include Do Better Work by Max Yoder. This is a book that he wrote while CEO & Co-founder of Lessonly. Lessonly was an exceptional SaaS company focused on helping people do better work, so they could lead better lives.  They had a strategic exit in 2021 when they were acquired by Seismic. Max's book is really a must-read for leaders that put people at the center of what they do. " 

Jorge Torres ’96 YC

Lecturer and Interim Managing Director, Tsai CITY

Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman is the book that most inspired my work in 2022. In a culture that says you can have it all, the message of the book is simple yet powerful: You can't. Our lives are finite (hence, 4000 weeks in the title), you can only do so much, and most of the productivity advice you've encountered doesn't work. The book has shaped the advice I give students who are trying to take advantage of everything a Yale education offers. It's ok to step back from some commitments so you can focus on others that are more meaningful. You'll put a higher value on the things that remain, and you'll probably be more productive, too. 

2022 Yale Innovators' Reading List

• 99% Invisible podcast
• Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
• Build the Damn Thing: How to Start a Successful Business if You’re Not a Rich White Guy by Kathryn Finney
• Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant
• Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson
• Startups for Good by Miles Lasater
• INSIGHTS: Reflections from 101 of Yale's Most Successful Entrepreneurs by Chris LoPresti
• Essentialism by Greg McKeown
• Deep Work by Cal Newport
• World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
• The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries 
• The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
• Do Better Work by Max Yoder