The Best of BookShelf 2025
As we close the chapter on 2025, we find ourselves reflecting on a year that has continued to test our collective resilience to the pace of change happening in the world around us.
The challenges we’ve faced in 2025, perhaps, are not all that different from the ones faced the year before. But the pressure placed upon finding solutions has certainly been elevated.
And, in 2025, much like the years before, in attempting to make sense of or find routes to solving such realities, BlueSky Thinking has looked to the leading academic minds at business schools and higher education institutions around the world to better understand how their research can enhance day-to-day life.
Whether it’s adapting to the tidal wave of tech and AI innovation shaping our lives, navigating the catastrophic impacts of climate change, or making sense of geopolitical shifts that affect how we live and work, the expertise shared on BlueSky Thinking seeks to set out the facts, challenge current thinking and offer new solutions.
Nowhere is that mission more clear than in the books selected for our BookShelf this year. Their themes address the questions that repeatedly surface in boardrooms, in government and business policy discussions, and even around the dinner table and attempt to provide a positive path forward.
The books that resonated most deeply with our readers in 2025 provided frameworks for thinking differently, evidence-based insights that challenge conventional wisdom, and practical actions to be adopted drawn from rigorous research. You can find a small selection of these books, along with discussions we had with their authors, included in the list below.
Our shortlist includes exploring the mental shift that comes with building a successful career through gig economy work with Anne Keegan, getting to grips with practical sustainability transition with Nicolas Chevrollier, and embracing the concept of innovationship to drive industry forward, with Federico Frattini.
If you missed them earlier this year, you can catch up below.
Research Handbook of Careers in the Gig Economy
Narratives surrounding the gig economy sector in 2025 have typically focused on insufficient pay, low skill requirement and sometimes exploitative nature of such roles.
So why are so many workers choosing to shift into the less secure world of gig work? Simply put, these roles offer a number of benefits: greater autonomy to pick and choose roles, the flexibility of fitting work around other priorities, and higher access to employment in general are just a few. But how can one navigate a successful career on such fluid foundations? Anne Keegan of UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School has the answer…
Radical Business Perspectives for Sustainability Transitions
The current methods for tackling, and reversing climate change simply aren’t working. Taking a new approach is long overdue. Thankfully, focusing on society’s transitions towards sustainability from a business perspective has become the focus of a collective of experts from the faculty of Nyenrode Business University. In April this year we sat down with Nicolas Chrevrollier to discuss the results of that effort – a carefully curated collection of radical concepts paving the way for businesses to start operating more dynamically when it comes to making sustainability transitions. For any professional seeking to make a greater impact on the world in 2026, this book provides a vital starting point.
Innovationship – Innovation Driven By Relationships
Countless business education programmes and other executive training routes are established with the goal of teaching professionals how to innovate. At a time when many are looking to tech to provide the solutions, co-authors Benedetto Buono, Federico Frattini, and Wim Vanhaverbeke step forward with another route. The success of innovation, their book suggests, lies not solely in the skills and qualifications of teams or in possessing the tech prowess to construct a solution to a market need. Instead, the key is found in the relationships innovators build with those around them. For innovators looking to gain an edge in 2026, the ideas shared here make for compelling reading.
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