Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation

How it reads

Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation is narrative nonfiction (business leadership, specifically), and its dominant mood is hopeful. Whatever it puts its people through, it believes things can get better. The pace is moderate — neither a page-turner nor a slow burn — so it holds up whether you read it in long sittings or short ones.

It's set in a big city setting, in the present day, told in the third person across several viewpoints. Its central concerns are power and politics, art and creativity and friendship. In weight it sits in the middle: substantial without being heavy going.

It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending resolves happily. At 320 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's well known, the kind of book most keen readers have heard of.