Five books on redesigning our world for the better

Best for: Building resilient, sustainable digital systems

Digital Sustainability: Designing resilient digital systems

Dr Catherine Mulligan and Shivam Kishore

Kogan Page, £44.99

 

Traditionally, organisations have prioritised systems that favour quarterly results over long-term growth, focusing on efficiency and maximising profits for shareholders. But this has left them brittle. As organisations face increasing volatility, shifting stakeholder expectations, and ever-evolving technology, addressing resilience can no longer wait until a crisis hits.

 

In Digital Sustainability: Designing Resilient Digital Systems (Kogan Page), Dr Catherine Mulligan and Shivam Kishore offer a playbook for using digital technologies as critical enablers of resilience. Drawing on their on-the-ground expertise, they explore how groundbreaking technologies, including AI, blockchain, and the Internet of Things, can accelerate learning from disruption, foster adaptability, and deliver services that improve the quality of life for all.

 

Through their Three-Lens Strategy, the authors provide practical frameworks for understanding emerging technologies, anticipating megatrends, governing innovation responsibly, and embedding sustainability into core digital transformation decisions.

 

Supported by real-world examples and robust models, Digital Sustainability identifies the barriers that prevent organisations from becoming resilient and the five pillars needed for sustainable digital transformation. It is a strategic guide for senior leaders, policymakers, and consultants seeking to push past short-termism and align advanced technologies with long-term resilience, responsible governance, and enduring performance. 

 

Best for: Rethinking the 9-5, to increase efficiency, health, and happiness

Shorter: How smart companies work less, embrace flexibility and boost productivity

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

Penguin, £11.04

 

Forget the old concept of the 9-5. Companies around the world are redesigning the work week to increase efficiency, health, and happiness in their workers.

 

The idea of success embraced by the global economy means being always-on, never missing an opportunity, and outworking your peers. But working ever-longer hours isn’t sustainable for companies or individuals. Fatigue-induced mistakes, whether in the operating room or factory line or trading floor, costs companies billions, and overwork alienates and burns out valuable workers. Yet as destructive as it is, the logic of modern capitalism demands that we work longer hours, and forever push ourselves to work even more.

 

But what if there is another way? Shorter (Penguin) tells the story of entrepreneurs and leaders all over the world who find that by eliminating distractions, reducing inefficiencies, and carving out time for highly focused work and high-quality collaboration, they can make their businesses more productive, profitable, creative, and sustainable. Shorter days also empower workers and improve their work-life balance; improve company recruitment and retention; and make leaders more thoughtful and decisive. They show the way to a future of work that is more efficient, sustainable, and humane.

 

Using design thinking, a business and product development process pioneered in Silicon Valley, futurist and consultant Alex Pang creates a step-by-step guide for readers to redesign their workdays-from reimagining the workday to designing initial trials, shortening meetings, streamlining communication, measuring the results, and selling the idea to investors and clients. He tells the story of this emerging global movement, the companies that are leading it, and how readers can join it.

 

Best for: Understanding the possibilities of natural capital economy

Rewilding Wealth: From extractive capitalism to regenerative returns

Dr Rich Stockdale

Rethink Press, £19.99

 

For generations, society has considered nature priceless. In reality, it’s been treated as worthless. No price, no incentive to protect. No market signal, no reason to restore. Now, as humanity faces environmental and social oblivion alongside rapid advances in technology, artificial intelligence, and data-driven markets, the need to use price to value and protect our indispensable natural assets has never been more paramount.

 

Transformative environmentalist and CEO of Oxygen Conservation, Dr Rich Stockdale argues that one of the biggest, most costly mistakes has been treating nature as “priceless”. In Rewilding Wealth: From Extractive Capitalism to Regenerative Returns (Rethink Press), he argues that the future economy will belong to those who learn to restore, scale, and compound natural capital – and why the greatest opportunities of this century will be built from the living world.

 

Drawing on first-hand experience, relentless commitment, and visionary thinking, Stockdale explores how nature can become a bankable proposition, unlocking huge capital flows to scale conservation and restore entire landscapes.

 

Part thesis, part playbook, and part provocation, Rewilding Wealth challenges investors, founders, and environmentalists to think critically about the future of conservation, capitalism, and investment – and the possibilities of the natural capital economy.

 

Best for: Shaping an economy that works for people and planet

Doughnut Economics: The must-read book that redefines economics for a world in crisis

Kate Raworth

Random House Business, £11.99

 

Economics matters. Its theories are the mother tongue of public policy, the rationale for multi-billion-dollar investments, and the tools we use to tackle global poverty and manage our planetary home. Pity then, or more like disaster, that its fundamental ideas are centuries out of date yet are still taught in college courses worldwide and still used to address critical issues in government and business alike.

 

Instead of criticising the past, Doughnut Economics (Random House Business) takes the long view forwards, identifying seven insights to help the twenty-first-century economist bring humanity into the global sweet spot (shaped like a doughnut) that combines human prosperity with ecological sustainability.

 

Kate Raworth handpicks the best emergent ideas, ranging from ecological, feminist, behavioural, and institutional economics to complexity thinking, systems dynamics, and Earth-systems science, to reveal the insights of eclectic economic rethinkers. Along the way, she points out how we can break our addiction to growth; redesign money, finance, and business to be in service to people; and create economies that are regenerative and distributive by design. It promises that the economic future will be fascinating, but wildly unlike the past, if we equip ourselves with the mindset needed to take it on.

 

Best for: Championing the journey to a more sustainable world

Designing Sustainable Futures: How to imagine, create, and lead the transition to a better world

Joseph Press and Manuela Celi

Routledge, £33.99

 

We are in a decisive decade that demands more inspired and informed practitioners who can use positive futures to rebalance the present. Designing Sustainable Futures: How to imagine, create, and lead the transition to a better world (Routledge) seeks to be a thought‑provoking approach to imagine, create, and lead the journey to a more sustainable world – where a spectrum of choices, including regenerative practices, await conscientious citizens, companies, and communities.

 

With this objective, and to help reverse the megatrends of economic disparity, social injustice, and climate change, the Institute for the Future (IFTF) and the Design Department of the Politecnico di Milano came together to prototype an approach to prepare all practitioners who seek to leverage the future to infuse our present with more impact and agency.

 

Guided by global experts and inspired by a growing network of future‑makers, Joseph Press and Manuela Celi share essential insights from this emerging landscape, offering thought‑provoking theory, innovative experiments, real‑world experiences, and practitioner stories. They draw insight and inspiration from many contemporary theories and practices, including strategic foresight, experiential futures, speculative design, design fiction, systems design, participatory design, and transformative leadership, and an emerging entry with genAI‑augmented design.

 

Regardless of whether you have a design or management background, or want to create a for‑profit or non‑profit, this book enables professionals across industries, as well as students preparing for a career in strategy, innovation, or transformation, the knowledge, skills, and confidence to strengthen resilience and guide the transition to the more sustainable practices of a better world.

 

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Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com and luoman