Connecting Dots is the monthly newsletter for innovation leaders by Brett Macfarlane.

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An Innovator’s Reading List in 2025

To end the year, I’m sharing a few books that helped me think more broadly, differently and deeply about innovation in our current context.

You may have noticed that we’re breathlessly being told ad nauseam that things are moving fast in uncertain directions all the time, relentlessly. In January, I realized this slop of content, anxiety and impulsiveness to be a great way to avoid thinking.

Instead, this year I rebelled and returned to books. The goal was to gain perspective, create space for reflection and to hone more impactful insights about business, society and technology; the foundations of innovation.

It started with a return to futures, which has re-emerged as an informed and thoughtful exploration of what’s wrong and what’s possible in our present time as much as the future.

Then, as the year progressed, I peppered in several business books for practical insights and tools for action. I even co-founded a business book club, which has been a wonderful space for peer learning and reflection.

More recently, fiction has re-entered as a fresh generation of informed, self-aware and courageous authors take new approaches to explore timeless narratives in our time.

As you end the year, I invite you to find a book to inspire, frame and broaden your ambitions and goals for 2026.

I also invite you to share with me what you read this year that you appreciated.

~Brett

Futures:

New York 2140 for a window into the timeliness amidst possibilities.
2054 for ongoing techno-optimism and what a singularity might look like.
The Ministry for the Future for how global organizations and leaders might move past crisis-stuckness

Business:

Bankers’ Trust: How Social Relations Avert Global Financial Collapse to appreciate the importance of well-developed relationships to meet challenging challenges
Epic Disruptions to learn from the past of creative destruction to enhance your engineering of our future.
Co-Intelligence: Living and Working With AI to chart your now adoption of algorithmic tools in work and life

Work-Life Strategy to find professional and personal happiness in a modern work and family context.
Motivational Interviewing is one of my most used practices to ethically increase changeability.

Literature:

Vulture on the nature of ambition, journalist and war
Bonding on the nature of tech, morality and relationships
Great Black Hope on the nature of class, generations and belonging

Questions and feedback to info@brettmacfarlane.com