5 Books for the Year 2025

18 January 2025
Author: Peter Schnoor   |   Reading time: 9 minutes

The year 2025 will bring changes. Many of them we do not yet see, some are already visible on the horizon. Here you will find our shortlist of 5 books that may be helpful in navigating new waters.

The new year is already a few weeks old, and I hope you slipped into it well.

I like to use the time between the years to reflect on the past year and consider what went well and whether I should change the direction of the company and my personal life priorities. We all do not know what the future holds. Looking at it soberly, we cannot even control the next half hour of our lives—no matter how much we want to ignore this fact. And yet, some developments for 2025 can be anticipated that may influence our lives and the life of our company.

The following selection of books is meant to inspire you and provide a small insight into what will occupy us as a company in 2025. Feel free to write to me at kontakt@netjutant.de to share your thoughts on the list and which books you would recommend!

Note: This is a translation of the German article 5 Bücher für das Jahr 2025. Some of the books mentioned are not available in English. But where applicable, I have changed the titles to the English edition and updated the relevant informations.

Inga Strümke: Artificial Intelligence

The topic of Artificial Intelligence is now an integral part of our daily lives. It is present everywhere, from our personal mobile phones to the services we use, the information we consume, and processes at the workplace. Everything is already permeated by AI or will be in the foreseeable future. And as technological progress has repeatedly brought about in humanity, AI will also fundamentally change our living and working environments.

Many people do not even know what AI actually is or how it works. What one does not know can be frightening. And fear is rarely a good advisor, especially not for entrepreneurs. I believe that the latter must engage with the topic to avoid being left behind someday.

The book by Inga Strümke, which was a number one bestseller in Norway and is now available in German, helps to understand AI and competently address its impacts—both good and not so good. The author, as a physicist and AI expert at NTNU in Trondheim and the Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering in Oslo, is uniquely positioned to treat the subject comprehensively and professionally, without falling into the traps of either doomsayers or blind tech enthusiasts. I personally appreciate her calm style in explaining complex issues clearly. I also like that she seems to be a nature-connected and down-to-earth person for whom technology and progress are not the only measures of value. The book reflects the sober clarity that many Norwegians possess, especially those who go ice climbing.

Title: Artificial Intelligence - How It Works and What It Means for Us
Author: Inga Strümke
Publisher: Rheinwerk Computing
ISBN: 978-3-367-10289-1

Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Skin in the Game

It is foreseeable that the year 2025 will be a year of political upheavals. Not only in Germany are elections approaching, but new governments are also coming to power in Austria, the USA, France, and many other nations.

That I personally resonate with many thoughts and ideas of the Lebanese-American author Nassim Nicholas Taleb has been clear since my article on antifragility. In his work "Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life", he reflects on the human tendency to shift risk onto others and to minimize personal accountability for one's own decisions and actions. He finds this tendency everywhere, from politics to economics and even in private life. He identifies it as one of the central problems of human orders and societies.

When we are led by decision-makers who have no "skin in the game," meaning they do not have to bear personal responsibility for their decisions, it has severe negative consequences. Not least, the decisions made become worse and make a society increasingly fragile. What incentives should companies that are "too big to fail," and thus can be rescued by taxpayers in emergencies, have for responsible management? What incentives should politicians have who do not have to be accountable for their decisions? What is still taken for granted by ordinary citizens—personal mistakes must be paid for—becomes less and less self-evident the higher one rises in a hierarchy.

This book also had a significant influence on the way I structured Netjutant as a company. Do I exclude personal liability through the legal form of "limited" (liability) or do I see it as a way to make better and more sustainable decisions? I recommend everyone to engage with these questions, but of course especially those who want to take on responsibility themselves.

Title: Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 978-0425284643

Daniel Büscher: TRUE PERSONAL BETTER BRANDING

Daniel Büscher is one of my great role models when it comes to design and authentic marketing.

Many people associate marketing with something rather unsympathetic: self-promotion, self-aggrandizement, arrogance, and pretense. That it can also be different is shown by my colleague Daniel Büscher, who is much more than "just" a designer, in his small book "TRUE PERSONAL BETTER BRANDING." It is not a book in the classical sense, but rather a collection of thoughts and impulses on the topic of identity and personal branding. It is aimed at anyone dealing with so-called "personal brands," meaning those who want to present themselves as a brand to the public.

What applies even more strongly here than for corporate brands is that authenticity is key. However, it is often not so easy to find the core of one's own personality and communicate it authentically. What moves me? Why do I do what I do? Where do I want to go? How can I best serve humanity (and my customers)? How do I present myself so that these things come across authentically and clearly? Daniel Büscher takes the reader on a small journey of discovery into their own motivations, ultimately connecting it back to marketing—real, authentic, and honest marketing.

Title: TRUE PERSONAL BETTER BRANDING - Identity as the Key to a Strong Personal Brand
Author: Daniel Büscher
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 978-3-7347-8444-6

Wolfgang Schur / Günther Weick: Sales Tales

This book is somewhat older, but still valuable for anyone who needs to sell something professionally. But not just for that. Sales can be found in one form or another everywhere in life, and not without reason does Zig Ziglar say about sales: "Sales is the greatest life school there is. It teaches us how to deal with people, how to listen, and how to recognize the needs of others."

In their book, sales professionals Wolfgang Schur and Günther Weick present the 20 biggest misconceptions about sales, from the mistaken belief that money is made in sales, to the statement "A good product sells itself," to the realization that one never really knows 100% what drives the most important customers.

The authors do this in their typical—and personally very appealing—style, which can also be found in many of their other (also very readable) books: wrapped in a framing story that reads like a novel. The art of storytelling greatly aids in processing and storing important information. It is all the more surprising that so few professional books make use of this.

If you have always wanted to dive deeper into the world of sales and become better at selling, you will surely uncover valuable treasures in this book.

Title: Sales Tales - The 20 Biggest Misconceptions About Sales
Authors: Wolfgang Schur, Günther Weick
Publisher: Eichborn
ISBN: 3-8218-5602-5

Tristan Gooley: How to Read Nature

This book is somewhat out of the ordinary. What is a book about nature and its hidden signs doing on the reading list of an internet agency?

Before you think we are drifting into esotericism, please stay with me for a moment! The thought behind this book suggestion is as follows: I—and all of us here in the Netjutant cosmos—spend practically the entire workday at the computer, shifting pixels, and yet in the end, we rarely hold a tangible result in our hands. Almost everything is digital. And it's not just us. All our lives are becoming increasingly digital and are drifting further away from the physical, tangible world. I am convinced that we need to actively counter this in our private lives to avoid falling into gloom and depression. It is no coincidence that these psychological side effects, as well as obesity, media addiction, and bullying, are spreading further in our society.

This is where this book suggestion comes in. We have unlearned the art of observation as humans. We can no longer deduce the weather from the clouds in the sky. We can no longer determine directions, and we can't read terrain features, water surfaces, or vegetation—why should we? There's an app for everything... Tristan Gooley takes us into nature and makes us aware of everything it wants to communicate to us. All we need for this is time, leisure, and observation. However, all three of these things are real luxuries nowadays. I want to encourage you to indulge in this luxury.

Title: How to Read Nature : Awaken Your Senses to the Outdoors You've Never Noticed
Author: Tristan Gooley
Publisher: Experiment
ISBN: 978-1-61519-429-2

What is important to you?

What do you think about our book selection? Is there something missing? Let us know! And let's work together for a good and successful year 2025!

Unterschrift
Peter Schnoor, Founder of Netjutant
contact@netjutant.com (+49) 8685-30998-22