The Extraordinary Business Book Club

They told Christian Busch that it would be 'academic suicide' to do a PhD on the science of luck. But it turns out that luck isn't a random force at all: the results may be unpredictable, but the pro…

A great way to celebrate a new year and a tricentenary episode: a 'best bits' compilation of wisdom from recent guests talking about one of the most important and rewarding aspects of writing a busin…

'We’re designed as cyclical creatures, from the most basic microcycle of breathing in and out to the annual cycle of the seasons, and if the New Year to come is our time for resolutions and purposefu…

What DO commissioning editors look for in business book proposals? Eloise Cook is the publisher responsible for Pearson's business list, and in this conversation she reveals what makes a proposal wor…

'No one wants to be preached at or talked down to, or made to believe it's fancier than it is. This is not rocket science. This is just good, plain common sense. You need a framework. There are lots …

'What's the worst that can happen?'

It might not sound like the most positive of mantras, but that simple question lies behind Sonya Barlow's astonishing success: one of 2020's Most Influential Women…

What's the magic by which the Word document you've been working on for so many weeks and months is transformed into a book? Jo Bottrill, head of Newgen UK, is a book production expert who's worked wi…

"Talk to anybody who will listen about your idea. That's the way that you improve it."

Michael Buckworth is an anomaly: a lawyer who's also an entrepreneur. He founded the only UK law firm working ex…

'You have to be good enough and you have to be persistent, [and] if you combine those two things together, then if you keep putting yourself in new situations, eventually there is going to be somethi…

'I came to writing really late. I was told I couldn't write... I had no first degree. I came to learning at 40 plus with an idea that I couldn't write, but I still loved learning. So it's been a tota…

'It's not that you're wrong. You're just no longer right. And that's a big difference.'

Michael Leckie has built his career on asking good questions at the right time, and in his book The Heart of Tr…

"We sometimes forget the value, or the power, or the impact of words because, 'Hey, we're speaking the whole time, or we're writing the whole time... it's only me, how powerful can it be?'

So we say …

'Why would you write 28 books? To get good at some of the stuff that you're writing about.'

As well as writing those 28 books, Jeremy Kourdi has experience of senior leadership at The Economist, Duke…

'I would encourage every author to have their own-book-shaped plan and their own-marketing-shape plan that is theirs, because that is what creates the books that really reflect our own message and th…

'The individual is a research project, every time we try something new we're being a kind of scientist in our own life.'

Megan Hayes studied the links between writing and happiness, and the first thi…

When you're writing a business book - or indeed any business writing - WHAT you're saying is the most important thing, of course. 

But HOW you say it can make all the difference as to how people read…

'They need to be able to 'get' the concepts that I'm trying to convey in whatever space they have available on the top of their phone screen.'

Used to writing for an academic audience, Dr Jen O'Ryan …

'How can we fall back in love with the idea of enough as a way of living, so that we stop striving and start thriving?'

The Art of Enough is the challenge of our age, says Becky Hall: as individuals …

Humans don't easily 'get' exponential growth - we've evolved in a linear world, and the pace of change we're facing now can leave us wrong-footed and disoriented. But Azeem Azhar argues that we need …

'Author-speakers... are often people who are true thought leaders, on a mission to share their knowledge. And yes, there are people who blog and there are people who post on social media and there ar…