Books

Best-sellers, classics and works offering new insights, these books are authored, co-authored, edited or co-edited by current Rotman faculty, and are currently in print and offered for sale.

Learn more about the Behaviourally Informed Organization

The Pandemic Information Solution (Endeavor Literary Press, 2021)

By Professor Joshua gans
In this follow-up book, to The Pandemic Information Gap, The Pandemic Information Solution, Gans outlines the solution to the information gap. By engaging in rapid, frequent screening, we can control the pandemic and restore normality.

The Behaviorally Informed Organization (Rotman-UTP Publishing, March 2021)

Edited by Professor Dilip Soman and Catherine Yeung
Behavior change is critical to organizational success, but despite its centrality to organizations, we do not have a good understanding of how organizations can successfully employ insights from behavioral science in their operations. To address this gap, this book develops an overarching framework for using behavioral science.

The Technological Revolution in Financial Services: How Banks, FinTechs and Customers Win Together (University of Toronto Press, 2020)

Edited by Michael King and Professor Richard Nesbitt
The financial services industry is in the midst of a sweeping transformation due to heightened regulation, technological disruption, and changing demographics. What changes can we expect to see across the sector in response to such forces over the coming decade?

WHEN MORE IS NOT BETTER: Overcoming America’s Obsession With Economic Efficiency (HBR, October 2020)

By: Professor Emeritus Roger L. Martin
When More is Not Better: Overcoming America’s Obsession with Economic Efficiency provides a unique viewpoint on what has changed and why the helpful pursuit of efficiency has turned into a damaging obsession. The consequence is a fundamentally different distribution of outcomes that will get worse not better as a natural consequence of treating the economy as a complicated machine and attempting to maximize its efficiency.

The Pandemic Information Gap: The Brutal Economics of COVID-19 (MIT Press, 2020)

By Professor Joshua Gans
Why solving the information problem should be at the core of our pandemic response: essential reading about the long-term implications of our current crisis.

Economics in the Age of COVID Book Cover

Economics in the Age of COVID-19 (MIT Press, April 2020)

By: Professor Joshua Gans
A guide to the pandemic economy: essential reading about the long-term implications of our current crisis.

Machine Learning in Business: An Introduction to the World of Data Science (July 2019)

By: Professor John H. Hull
This book is for business executives and students who want to learn about the tools used in machine learning. It explains the most popular algorithms clearly and succinctly without using calculus or matrix/vector algebra. The focus is on business applications.

Innovation + Equality: How to Create a Future That Is More Star Trek Than Terminator (The MIT Press, October 2019)

By: Professor Joshua Gans (with Andrew Leigh)
Is economic inequality the price we pay for innovation? The amazing technological advances of the last two decades―in such areas as artificial intelligence, genetics, and materials―have benefited society collectively and rewarded innovators handsomely: we get cool smartphones and technology moguls become billionaires. This contributes to a growing wealth gap; in the United States; the wealth controlled by the top 0.1 percent of households equals that of the bottom ninety percent. Is this the inevitable cost of an innovation-driven economy? Economist Joshua Gans and policy maker Andrew Leigh make the case that pursuing innovation does not mean giving up on equality―precisely the opposite. In this book, they outline ways that society can become both more entrepreneurial and more egalitarian.

The 360° Corporation: From Stakeholder Trade-offs to Transformation (Stanford Business Books, September 2019)

By Professor Sarah Kaplan
Companies are increasingly facing intense pressures to address stakeholder demands from every direction: consumers want socially responsible products; employees want meaningful work; investors now screen on environmental, social, and governance criteria; "clicktivists" create social media storms over company missteps. CEOs now realize that their companies must be social as well as commercial actors, but stakeholder pressures often create trade-offs with demands to deliver financial performance to shareholders. How can companies respond while avoiding simple "greenwashing" or "pinkwashing"? This book lays out a roadmap for organizational leaders who have hit the limits of the supposed win-win of shared value to explore how companies can cope with real trade-offs, innovating around them or even thriving within them. Suggesting that the shared-value mindset may actually get in the way of progress, bestselling author Sarah Kaplan shows in The 360° Corporation how trade-offs, rather than being confusing or problematic, can actually be the source of organizational resilience and transformation.

Living with China: A Middle Power Finds Its Way (Rotman-UTP Publishing, September 2019)

By Professor Wendy Dobson
Living with China makes the case to Canadians to adopt a forward-looking China strategy that recognizes forty years of successful reforms as foundations of President Xi Jinping’s ambitious long game to 2049, the centenary of the founding of the People’s Republic. Looking forward, market reforms will be key drivers of China’s long-term growth yet Chinese policy is ambivalent about the potential dangers of spontaneous market forces undermining the Party’s central goal of political stability. These tensions are pointed out in the book’s early chapters that outline what Canadians need to know about the Chinese economy. Getting the foundations right by growing at sustainable rates and dealing with unproductive state-owned enterprises; promoting innovation as a future growth driver and modernizing the fragile financial system are all works in progress where tensions between ‘plan’ and market forces are apparent. Two chapters also examine how Chinese enterprises are going global through direct investments and participation in the dynamic but troubled Belt and Road Initiative.

Private Sector Entrepreneurship in Global Health: Innovation, Scale and Sustainability Paperback (Rotman-UTP Publishing, June 2019)

Edited By: Professors Anita McGahan and Will Mitchell (with Kathryn Mossman and Onil Bhattacharyya)
Poor access to care in low- and middle-income countries due to high costs, geographic barriers, and a shortage of trained medical staff has motivated many organizations to rethink their model of health service delivery. Many of these new models are being developed by private sector actors, including non-profits, such as non-governmental organizations, and for-profits, such as social enterprises. By partnering extensively with public sector organizations, these non-state actors have enormous potential to scale innovation in global health. Understanding how these leading organizations operate and target hard-to-reach groups may yield key insights to sustainably improve health care for all.

Wealth of Wisdom: The Top 50 Questions Wealthy Families Ask (Wiley, December 2018)

By Professor Tom McCullough (co-author Keith Whitaker)
Wealth of Wisdom offers essential guidance and tools to help high-net-worth families successfully manage significant wealth. By compiling the 50 most common questions surrounding protection and growth, this book provides a compendium of knowledge from experts around the globe and across disciplines. Deep insight and thoughtful answers put an end to uncertainty, and help lay to rest the issues you have been wrestling with for years; by divulging central lessons and explaining practical actions you can take today, this book gives you the critical information you need to make more informed decisions about your financial legacy.

Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence (Harvard Business Review Press, April 2018)

By Professors Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb
Artificial intelligence does the seemingly impossible, magically bringing machines to life--driving cars, trading stocks, and teaching children. But facing the sea change that AI will bring can be paralyzing. How should companies set strategies, governments design policies, and people plan their lives for a world so different from what we know? In the face of such uncertainty, many analysts either cower in fear or predict an impossibly sunny future. But in Prediction Machines, three eminent economists recast the rise of AI as a drop in the cost of prediction. With this single, masterful stroke, they lift the curtain on the AI-is-magic hype and show how basic tools from economics provide clarity about the AI revolution and a basis for action by CEOs, managers, policy makers, investors, and entrepreneurs.

Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do About It (Allen Lane, March 2018)

By Professor András Tilcsik (co-author Chris Clearfield)
A crash on the Washington, D.C. metro system. An accidental overdose in a state-of-the-art hospital. An overcooked holiday meal. At first glance, these disasters seem to have little in common. But surprising new research shows that all these events—and the myriad failures that dominate headlines every day—share similar causes. By understanding what lies behind these failures, we can design better systems, make our teams more productive, and transform how we make decisions at work and at home.

From Wall Street to Bay Street: The Origins and Evolution of American and Canadian (Rotman-UTP Publishing, March 2018)

By Professors Chris Kobrak and Joe Martin
From Wall Street to Bay Street is the first book for a lay audience to tackle the similarities and differences between the financial systems of Canada and the United States. Christopher Kobrak and Joe Martin reveal the different paths each system has taken since the early nineteenth-century, despite the fact that they both originate from the British system. The authors trace the roots of each country’s financial systems back to Alexander Hamilton and insightfully argue that while Canada has preserved a Hamiltonian financial tradition, the United States has favoured the populist Jacksonian tradition since the 1830s. The sporadic and inconsistent fashion in which the American system have changed over time is at odds with the evolutionary path taken by the Canadian system. From Wall Street to Bay Street offers a timely and accessible comparison of financial systems that reflects the political and cultural milieus of two of the world’s top ten economies.

Survive and Thrive: Winning Against Strategic Threats to Your Business (Dog Ear Publishing, August 2017)

Edited by Professors Joshua Gans and Sarah Kaplan
Survive and Thrive: Winning Against Strategic Threats to Your Business features a collection of essays by strategy professors at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. The essays take the reader on a tour through some of the most vexing threats to business today, threats that put the very existence of organizations into question. From disruptive innovation, to social media disasters, to mistaken technical investments, to gender discrimination, to misunderstood competition, companies need to be able to anticipate crises and prepare to deal with them head on. Across this collection of essays, readers will get warnings about four mistakes that companies commonly make - failing to appreciate interactions within systems, getting stuck in existing ways of doing business, falling victim to cognitive biases, and getting derailed by short-term incentives.

Creating Great Choices: A Leader's Guide to Integrative Thinking (Harvard Business Review Press, September 2017)

By Adjunct Professor Jennifer Riel and Professor Roger Martin
Conventional wisdom--and business school curricula--teaches us that making trade-offs is inevitable when it comes to hard choices. But sometimes, accepting the obvious trade-off just isn't good enough: the choices in front of us don't get us what we need.

The Thoughtful Leader: A Model of Integrative Leadership (Rotman-UTP Publishing; 1 edition (July 7 2016))

By Jim Fisher, Professor Emeritus
Leadership is a quality that is difficult to define. Some believe that it is innate, the gift of a selected few. Others believe that it is a skill that can be learned but don’t agree on what, exactly, should be taught.In The Thoughtful Leader, Jim Fisher provides an invigorating, inclusive and positive framework for teaching current and aspiring leaders in all walks of life.

The Future of Pension Management: Integrating Design, Governance, and Investing (Wiley, March 2016)

By Keith Ambachtsheer, Director Emeritus, Rotman ICPM
Pension funds have become an everyday news item, and much of the news isn't good. From the ongoing threat of future financial crises and bubbles to downright criminal scandals, workers are justifiably anxious about the security of their retirement.

The Disruption Dilemma (The MIT Press, Mar. 25, 2016)

Professor Joshua Gans
"Disruption" is a business buzzword that has gotten out of control. Today everything and everyone seem to be characterized as disruptive -- or, if they aren't disruptive yet, it's only a matter of time before they become so.

Getting Beyond Better (HBR Press, October 6, 2015 by Roger Martin and Sally Osberg)

Professor Roger Martin
In this compelling book, strategy guru Roger L. Martin and Skoll Foundation President and CEO Sally R. Osberg describe how social entrepreneurs target systems that exist in a stable but unjust equilibrium and transform them into entirely new, superior, and sustainable equilibria.

The Design of Insight How to Solve Any Business Problem (Stanford University Press, 2015)

Professor Mihnea Moldoveanu
Familiar modes of problem solving may be efficient, but they often prevent us from discovering innovative solutions to more complex problems. To create meaningful change, we must train ourselves to discover previously unseen variables in day-to-day challenges.

The Last Mile: Creating Social and Economic Value from Behavioral Insights (Rotman-UTP Publishing, 2015)

Professor Dilip Soman
Most organizations spend much of their effort on the start of the value creation process: namely, creating a strategy, developing new products or services, and analyzing the market. They pay a lot less attention to the end: the crucial “last mile” where consumers come to their website, store, or sales representatives and make a choice.

Epinets: The Epistemic Structure and Dynamics of Social Networks (Stanford University Press, 2014)

Professors Mihnea Moldoveanu & Joel Baum
Epinets presents a new way to think about social networks, which focuses on the knowledge that underlies our social interactions. Guiding readers through the web of beliefs that networked individuals have about each other and probing into what others think, this book illuminates the deeper character and influence of relationships among social network participants.

Innovating for the Global South: Towards an Inclusive Innovation Agenda (Rotman-UTP Publishing, 2014)

Professors Dilip Soman, Anita McGahan & Will Mitchell
Despite the vast wealth generated in the last half century, in today’s world inequality is worsening and poverty is becoming increasingly chronic. Hundreds of millions of people continue to live on less than $2 per day and lack basic human necessities such as nutritious food, shelter, clean water, primary health care, and education.

Network Advantage: How to Unlock Value From Your Alliances and Partnerships (Jossey-Bass, 2014)

Professor Tim Rowley
Companies made more than 42,000 alliances over the past decade worldwide, many of which failed to deliver strong results. This book explains why and how you can seize the benefits from your business’s network of alliances with customers, suppliers and competitors.

Partners & Rivals: The Uneasy Future of China's Relationship with the United States (Rotman-UTP Press, 2013)

Professor Wendy Dobson
Until the global financial crisis, China was thought to be decades away from overtaking the United States as the world’s largest economy. But while the US skirted economic stagnation, China was able to successfully navigate the crisis, and its growth continues to accelerate. Has the time arrived to re-evaluate our assumptions about the current world order

Family Wealth Management: Seven Imperatives for Successful Investing in the New World Order (WILEY, 2013)

Professor Tom McCullough
The book introduces you to a unique model of wealth management that produces the desired return outcomes while being consistent with a family's overarching goals and values. The approach combines the best traditional investment and portfolio management practices with innovative new approaches designed to successfully navigate through economic climates both fair and foul.

Rotman on Design: The Best on Design Thinking from Rotman Magazine (Rotman-UTP Publishing, 2013)

Over the past decade, the Rotman School of Management and its award-winning publication, Rotman magazine, have proved to be leaders in the emerging field of design thinking. Employing methods and strategies from the design world to approach business challenges, design thinking can be embraced at every level of an organization to help build innovative products and systems, and to enhance customer experiences.

Flux: What Marketing Managers Need to Navigate the New Environment (Rotman-UTP Publishing, 2013)

Professors Dilip Soman and David Soberman with the Rotman marketing faculty
The past decade has seen a number of developments that threaten the very fabric of how marketing activities have traditionally been conducted. On one hand, consumers are increasingly socially networked and value-conscious, with heightened expectations of how companies will react to their demands.

Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works (HBR Press, 2013)

A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin
Strategy is not complex. But it is hard. It’s hard because it forces people and organizations to make specific choices about their future—something that doesn’t happen in most companies.

Build, Borrow, or Buy: Solving the Growth Dilemma (HBR Press, 2012)

Professor Will Mitchell
The problem is most firms’ growth strategies emphasize just one type of growth—some focus on organic growth, others on M&A. When these strategies falter, the common response is simply to try harder—but firms falling into this “implementation trap” usually end up losing out to a competitor whose approach is more inclusive.

CANADA: What It Is; What It Can Be (Rotman-UTP Publishing, 2012)

Professors Roger Martin and James Milway
Canadians have achieved an enviable balance of economic prosperity and civic harmony, but as emerging countries like China, India, and Brazil take their place alongside developed economies, we cannot be complacent.

Rise of the Creative Class - Revisited: 10th Anniversary Edition - Revised and Expanded (Basic Books, 2012)

Professor Richard Florida
Ten years ago, Richard Florida published a path-breaking book about the forces that were reshaping our economy, our geography, our work, and our whole way of life.

Design Works - How to Tackle Your Toughest Innovation Challenges Through Business Design (Rotman-UTP Publishing, 2012)

Heather Fraser Co-Founder and former Executive Director, Rotman Design Works
High-profile business leaders in organizations around the world now use approaches and methods from the design world to drive breakthrough innovation and growth. How can you translate design thinking into doing in a way that will lead to bigger breakthroughs and business strategies for success?

Fixing the Game: Bubbles, Crashes, and What Capitalism Can Learn from the NFL (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011)

Professor Roger Martin
American capitalism is in dire straits, caught in a perilous pattern of increasing volatility, decreasing investor returns, and ongoing bad behavior by executives. And it’s getting worse.

Gravity Shift: How Asia's New Economic Powerhouses Will Shape the 21st Century (Rotman-UTP Publishing, 2009)

Professor Wendy Dobson
The rapid growth, diversity and strategic importance of the emerging Chinese and Indian economies have fired the world's imagination with both hopes and fears for the future.

Becoming the Evidence-Based Manager: Making the Science of Management Work for You (Davies-Black Publishing, 2009)

Professor Gary Latham
Into this action-ready toolkit, Gary Latham brings his unique perspective as an organizational psychologist and award-winning researcher to translate management research of the past 50 years into everyday examples of proven guidelines for handling the most common challenges managers face in effectively managing people.

The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage (Harvard Business Publishing, 2009)

Professor Roger Martin
Most companies today have innovation envy. They yearn to come up with a game—changing innovation like Apple's iPod, or create an entirely new category like Facebook. Many make genuine efforts to be innovative—they spend on R&D, bring in creative designers, hire innovation consultants. But they get disappointing results.

Relentless Change: A Casebook for the Study of Canadian Business History (Rotman/UTP Publishing, 2009)

Professor Joe Martin
Casebooks in business history are designed to instruct students in classrooms and boardrooms about the evolution of business management.

Opposable Mind: Winning Through Integrative Thinking (Harvard Business Press, 2009)

Professor Roger Martin
If you want to be as successful as Jack Welch, Larry Bossidy, or Michael Dell, read their autobiographical advice books, right? Wrong, says Roger Martin in The Opposable Mind.

Who’s Your City: How the Creative Economy is Making Where You Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life (Random House Canada, 2008)

Professor Richard Florida
All places are not created equal. In this groundbreaking book, Richard Florida shows that where we live is increasingly a crucial factor in our lives, one that fundamentally affects our professional and personal prospects.

For more information

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Rotman School of Management
University of Toronto
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