TFP’s December Book Picks: Your Top Reads of 2015

Disruptive technologies. Distributed content models. Globalization and transformation. The publishing business has certainly seen some seismic shifts in 2015, bringing both challenges and opportunities. We hope our monthly recommended reading lists have provided you with the resources you need to learn about these important trends and prepare for what’s down the road.

To mark the end of this game-changing year, we bring you the most popular TFP Book Picks of 2015, decided by you, our readers. Top topics include content strategy, data visualization, design thinking, and more.

In the weeks and months ahead, will you be focused on what your peers are reading about? Take a look…

Top Book Picks of 2015

The Content Strategy Toolkit: Methods, Guidelines, and Templates for Getting Content Right by Meghan Casey

Content is everything. It’s a business asset that deserves strategic attention. Today, people who never thought much about content are being asked to tackle it and all its complexities, and they’re clamoring for information that goes beyond the theoretical and illustrates practical application. This book offers exactly that. It provides an abundance of examples along with concrete suggestions and action plans for how to implement strategies.

Enterprise Content Strategy: A Project Guide by Kevin Nichols

This step-by-step guide to building an enterprise content strategy outlines best practices for conducting and executing content strategy projects. Enterprise Content Strategy draws on Kevin Nichols’ experience managing one of the largest and most successful global content strategy teams, providing an insider’s look at how to build an enterprise content strategy. Full of definitions, questions you need to ask, checklists, and guidelines, this book focuses not on the what or why, but on the how.

The Ultimate Guide to Business Process Management: Everything you need to know and how to apply it to your organization by Theodore Panagacos

In this step by step guide, former management consultant and change management expert Theodore Panagacos walks you through the entire discipline of business process management. Learn how to fast track your organization’s strategy to govern processes, create a process culture, and measure business performance. Best of all, this crystal-clear, convenient-sized book can be put to work in your organization immediately!

The Language of Content Strategy by Scott Abel

This book defines 52 terms that are central to the discipline of content strategy. Each term has been defined by a contributor known for his or her depth of knowledge in that area of expertise, accompanied by an essay that explains the importance of the term within the world of content strategy. This guide provides a starting place for conversations among content strategy practitioners and between practitioners and clients.

Visualize This: The Flowing Data Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics by Nathan Yau

Data is ever-increasing and can be overwhelming to organize in a way that makes sense to its intended audience. In this full-color book, data visualization guru and author Nathan Yau uses step-by-step tutorials to show you how to visualize and effectively tell stories with data. He explains how to gather, parse, and format data, and design high-quality graphics that help you explore and present patterns, outliers, and relationships.

Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation: What They Can’t Teach You at Business or Design School by Idris Mootee

As many companies have lost confidence in the traditional ways of running a business, design thinking has entered the mix. This book presents a framework for design thinking that is relevant to business management, marketing, and design strategies, and provides a toolkit to apply concepts for immediate use in everyday work. It explains how design thinking can bring about creative solutions to solve complex business problems.

Design Thinking: Integrating Innovation, Customer Experience, and Brand Value by Thomas Lockwood

Design has greater opportunity to add value to the triple bottom line than any other business function. Ranked in the top 100 bestseller list by Amazon in design, marketing, and communication categories, Design Thinking explores techniques, methods, and hands-on case studies from international thought leaders, covering design thinking methods, design thinking in service design, design thinking in brand building, and design thinking in creating customer experiences.

Handbook of Research on Digital Media and Creative Technologies by Dew Harrison

This handbook highlights the latest research in education, communication, and creative social expression using digital technologies. By exploring advances in art and culture across national and sociological borders, it gives artists, theorists, information communication specialists, and researchers the tools they need to effectively disseminate their ideas across the digital landscape.

The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO’s Strategies for Defeating the Devil’s Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization by Tom Kelley

The author of the bestselling The Art of Innovation reveals the strategies design firm IDEO uses to foster innovative thinking throughout organizations and overcome naysayers who stifle creativity. Filled with engaging stories of how companies like Kraft, Procter and Gamble, Cargill, and Samsung have incorporated IDEO’s thinking to transform the customer experience, this is an extraordinary guide to nurturing and sustaining a culture of continuous innovation and renewal.

If you’d like to share something you’ve read, drop us a note.  Also check out the Technology for Publishing blog, and keep up with the latest industry news coverage by signing up for our This Week in Publishing emails and monthly Publishing Innovations newsletter.

Tagged with: Book Picks, recommended reading

Posted by: Margot Knorr Mancini