Notable business books based on history tend to be leadership based:

Author Jerry Manas
Author of several brilliant series on
lessons from Rome and Napoleon

Can the subject of history be relevant to businesses today?
History can be used to help us better succeed with today's IT projects specifically with the approach and delivery. However, history needs to be viewed in a different way to be effective as the format taught in the classroom is not conducive because:

• The traditional approach is chronological based on short periods, e.g., 1870 to present day, reign of monarchs or political leaders.
• By events occurring within a nation or state, e.g., wars and battles, revolutions, natural disasters.
• It tends to bottle inventions and breakthroughs in emerging technologies as singular events, made by hard working individuals.

As a result, the experience:

• is not interconnected across expanses of time or more importantly events, or across geography's and regions, or the globe,
• is not interdisciplinary and very memorably,
• is less relevant to business in lessons learned,
• can turn off the audience.

There are history books targeted at business leaders but very few explore the practical application of emerging technologies to business problems. They provide little insight into our use of information technology (IT) and the delivery of projects.

An alternative approach to using history in business
Demonstrated by James Burke through the first “Connections” series (1978). He turned the examination of emerging technology into a detective story through an interdisciplinary approach:

• He charted the course of technology innovation from ancient times showing emerging technology as a jigsaw made of many pieces.
• He connected seeming unrelated events or inventions to each other over centuries of time.
• He looked for things happening in spite of, and not because of, their inventors' intentions.

For example:

• How the popularity of underwear in the 12th century led to the invention of the printing press.
• How the arrival of the cannon led to the development of movies.
• How the stirrup led to Telecommunications.
• How the plough led to the modern day computer.
• How uniform coinage lead to the atomic bomb.
• How the Kellogg Corn Flake led to the diesel engine.

Burke's approach opened up a new approach to exploring history and extracting key lessons for today's world.