Thinkers50 announces its 2025 Management Classics Booklist

PRESS RELEASE
12 May 2025 

Thinkers50 announces its 2025 Management Classics Booklist

LONDON – Thinkers50, the global authority on management thinking, has unveiled its 2025 Management Classics Booklist. This annual curation honours management and business books that have withstood the test of time and remain powerfully relevant today.

Among the exemplary works to be showcased this year are Conscious Capitalism by John Mackey and Raj Sisodia (HBR Press, 2014); Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008); and Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux (Nelson Parker, 2014).

The Booklist also pays tribute to classic titles from the last century, including Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Free Press, 1989); Shona L Brown and Kathleen M Eisenhardt’s Competing on the Edge: Strategy as Structured Chaos (HBR Press, 1998); Kenichi Ohmae’s The End of the Nation State: The Rise of Regional Economies (HarperCollins Publishers, 1995); and Mary Parker Follett’s Dynamic Administration (Pitman Publishing and later Routledge, 1941).

‘The Classic Management books are the ones that have had and continue to have a long-term impact on the way people think about and practice management,’ says Thinkers50 co-founder, Stuart Crainer. ‘They are the coping stones for modern management and remain important reading for managers everywhere.’

Every year Thinkers50 announces two booklists, one for the Classics and one that features the best of the current crop – the Best New Management Books – which is to be released on 16 June. Co-founder Des Dearlove adds, ‘With these two annual lists we are building an indispensable guide for those who want to understand the past, present, and future of management and business.’

Rounding out the 2025 Classics Booklist are Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt (Profile Books, 2011); Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone by Satya Nadella, Greg Shaw, and Jill Tracie Nichols (HarperCollins Publishers, 2018); and The New Long Life: A Framework for Flourishing in a Changing World by Andrew J Scott and Lynda Gratton (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020).

These new additions join the hallowed ranks of Classics from previous years, which include seminal works such as In Search of Excellence (1982) by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, The Innovator’s Dilemma (1997) by Clay Christensen, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid (2004) by CK Prahalad, and The Fearless Organization (2018) by Amy Edmondson.

Books were selected from nominations and canvassed opinions from within the Thinkers50 Community, which comprises many of today’s most eminent business thinkers.

Explains Des Dearlove, ‘To help us compile this year’s Classics List, we reached out to managers and management thinkers to ask which books they would include in their all-time greats – which books do they consider the most relevant today, with the only rule being that participants could not nominate their own book.’

In alphabetical order of author, this year’s top 10 Management Classics are:

Competing on the Edge: Strategy as Structured Chaos by Shona L Brown and Kathleen M Eisenhardt (HBR Press, 1998).

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey (Free Press, 1989).

Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux (Nelson Parker, 2014).

Conscious Capitalism by John Mackey and Raj Sisodia (HBR Press, 2014).

Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008).

Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone by Satya Nadella, Greg Shaw, and Jill Tracie Nichols (HarperCollins Publishers, 2018).

The End of the Nation State: The Rise of Regional Economies by Kenichi Ohmae (HarperCollins Publishers, 1995).

Dynamic Administration by Mary Parker Follett (Pitman Publishing and later Routledge, 1941).

Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt (Profile Books, 2011).

The New Long Life: A Framework for Flourishing in a Changing World by Andrew J Scott and Lynda Gratton (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020).