a random walk down wall street
A01=John Kay
Author_John Kay
black swans
books about achieving goals
books for business success
Category=KJ
Category=VSP
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_self-help
forthcoming
how progress ends
how to succeed at work
inheritocracy
lords of finance
right kind of wrong
supremacy
the thinking machine
when markets collide
Product details
- ISBN 9781805229872
- Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 19 Nov 2026
- Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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'Persuasive, rigorous, creative and wise. Brilliant' TIM HARFORD
'Kay is both a first-class economist and an excellent writer' FINANCIAL TIMES
It may feel paradoxical, but in business and in life, our goals are often best achieved when approaching them indirectly. In a traffic jam, the quickest route to your destination might involve going the long way round. Those who deliberately seek love rarely find it; the endless pursuit of happiness leads to misery. For a corporation, focus on cutting-edge engineering, new technology or a unique product is what generates profit; making profit the sole purpose of a business usually leads to its collapse.
From the celebrated economist John Kay, Obliquity is a manifesto for aiming slightly off-target. In this provocative thesis, Kay deals with everything from football to forest fires to show how problems are best solved when thought of obliquely, and shows us how to achieve our objectives through a gradual process of risk-taking and discovery.
Sir John Kay is one of Britain's leading economists. Previous titles include the Saltire Prize-winning and Orwell Prize-shortlisted Other People's Money, The Long and Short of It, Greed is Dead, Radical Uncertainty and the FT Business Book Award-shortlisted The Corporation in the Twenty-First Century. He lives in Oxford.
