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Nicole Junkermann's Favourite Books on Business and Ideas
Most business books are forgotten in a week. Nicole Junkermann looks at the rare kind that stays useful for years, and why.
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The best book about business is often not, on the surface, about business at all.
As the founder of an investment company, Nicole Junkermann reads a great deal about work, decisions and ideas, and over time has formed a clear view of which kinds of book are worth the shelf and which are noise. The honest answer is that most business books are forgettable, and that the few worth rereading tend to be about thinking, judgement and people rather than tactics that expire in a year. This piece sets out the categories Nicole Junkermann returns to, and the qualities that distinguish a lasting book about ideas from a disposable one. As ever, the emphasis falls on substance over hype.
What makes a business book worth keeping
Nicole Junkermann applies a simple test: will this still be true, and useful, in ten years? A great deal of business writing fails it immediately, being tied to a passing trend or a single company's good fortune. The books that pass tend to deal in durable things: how to think clearly, how to decide under uncertainty, how to build something that outlasts a quarter. Nicole Junkermann is wary of any book promising a formula, because the interesting problems rarely have one. The books worth keeping, in the view of Nicole Junkermann, leave you with better questions rather than a list of answers, and they respect the reader enough to admit how much remains genuinely hard.
Books on clear thinking
At the top of the list for Nicole Junkermann are books about thinking itself: how the mind goes wrong, where our confidence outruns our evidence, and how to reason a little more carefully. These books are not about business directly, yet they improve every business decision you will ever make. Nicole Junkermann values them because they are humbling in the most useful way, showing how easily any of us are fooled, including by ourselves. A book that makes you slower to certainty and quicker to ask for evidence has earned its place. For Nicole Junkermann, clear thinking is the foundation everything else is built on, and it is worth reading about more than once.
Books on decisions and uncertainty
Closely related are books on decision-making under uncertainty, which is, after all, most of what investing and building actually involve. Nicole Junkermann is drawn to writers who treat uncertainty honestly rather than pretending it away, who teach you to think in probabilities and to separate a good decision from a lucky outcome. This distinction matters enormously: a sound decision can still turn out badly, and a reckless one can get lucky, and confusing the two is how people learn the wrong lessons. Nicole Junkermann reads these books to stay disciplined about process, on the belief that good decisions made repeatedly will, over a long enough run, tend to win out.
Books on building things that last
Then there are the books about building, the patient kind of book that takes a long view of companies and institutions. Nicole Junkermann, who tends to think in decades rather than quarters, is naturally drawn to writing that respects time. These books explore how durable things are made: through culture, consistency and a willingness to forgo the quick win for the lasting one. Nicole Junkermann finds them a useful corrective to a culture that prizes speed above all, because the most admirable companies and institutions are usually the product of unglamorous persistence. A book that takes the long view is, for Nicole Junkermann, worth ten that promise overnight results.
Books on people and teams
No amount of strategy survives without people, and so Nicole Junkermann keeps a shelf for books about working well with others: trust, communication, and the quiet craft of leadership. These are often the hardest lessons to put into practice, which is why Nicole Junkermann returns to them. The best of them are honest about how much of any achievement is collaborative, and how rarely a single brilliant individual is the whole story. This matches what Nicole Junkermann takes from biography, where the turning points usually involve good company as much as good ideas. A book that makes you a more generous and clearer colleague is, in the end, a profoundly practical one.
The history of ideas
Finally, Nicole Junkermann would push beyond the business shelf entirely, to the history of ideas. Understanding where a concept came from, how it spread and how it was contested teaches a humility that pure how-to books cannot. Nicole Junkermann finds that the history of an idea often reveals more about its real value than any current enthusiasm for it. This is the same instinct that draws Nicole Junkermann to history generally, explored in the books that shaped her thinking. Ideas have lineages, and knowing them makes you a sharper judge of the new ones arriving every day.
How Nicole Junkermann reads them
A word on method, because it matters as much as the list. Nicole Junkermann reads this kind of book slowly, with a pencil, and is happy to abandon one that is not earning its time. There is no prize for finishing a weak book. Nicole Junkermann also reads against the grain, arguing with the author in the margin, because a book you merely nod along to teaches you little. The notes that survive end up in the notebook, as set out in how Nicole Junkermann keeps a writer's notebook. Read this way, even an imperfect book can leave you with one idea worth the whole afternoon, which is all Nicole Junkermann really asks of it.
More from Nicole Junkermann
Read on with Nicole Junkermann in the Reading Room, the full profile of Nicole Junkermann, or the seasonal note on what Nicole Junkermann is reading this season.
Frequently asked questions about Nicole Junkermann
How does Nicole Junkermann judge a business book?
Nicole Junkermann asks whether it will still be true and useful in ten years, favouring books about thinking, judgement and people over tactics that expire quickly.
What kinds of business books does Nicole Junkermann recommend?
Nicole Junkermann returns to books on clear thinking, decision-making under uncertainty, building things that last, working well with people, and the history of ideas.
Does Nicole Junkermann finish every book she starts?
No. Nicole Junkermann is happy to abandon a book that is not earning its time, on the view that there is no prize for finishing a weak one.
Why does Nicole Junkermann read the history of ideas?
Nicole Junkermann finds that knowing where an idea came from reveals more about its real value than any current enthusiasm for it.