I love lists. Especially the year-end variety. Music, books, advertisements. Successes, mistakes. Put it in a list and I’ll give you three more reasons why I’ll read it.

But, for the many that I comb through and truly enjoy, there is only one that I consider a can’t miss at the end of every year. And, at the end of every year, I’m always reminded that my favorite year-end list is actually (a) a non-business list about business and (b) a list for the following year.

It’s The New York Times’ Year In Ideas – now in its ninth edition. Dealing with subject matter as far reaching as social science to sports, the list provides “clever, important, silly and just plain weird innovations… from all corners of the thinking world.”

Inspiration, as Malcolm Gladwell has shown again and again, can be found anywhere. And, I would argue, that’s what we should strive for as a matter of course. The best way think like everyone else in your line of work is to attend the same seminars they attend, read the same authors they’re reading and see the world the way they see the world. It’s a recipe for vanilla.

So, I like my business lists different. From Random Promotions (Are we really just promoted to our level of incompetence?) to Drunken Ultimatums (Are we that vengeful of a culture?), each entry provides the opportunity to think in new ways (Is Michael Jackson more responsible for real time search than Google?). It’s all there. It’s kind of weird. And it’s well worth the read.

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