Stuck in a rut and want to get more out of your day than sitting at a desk, punching keys and drinking lukewarm coffee? Hate reading those dull self-help books that are just a stream of 'do this thing and you'll be fulfilled'? Well, good news - we've lined up seven books that will help you get your crap together and take your career, personal life and leisure to the next LEVEL.

Here they are.

Over a thousand years ago, Chinese alchemists created an early form of gunpowder. Made primarily of potassium nitrate, sulfur and charcoal, the ingredients were packed into bamboo shoots and thrown into the fire. The idea was that the subsequent explosion of noise and light would ward off evil spirits.

A millennium later, we use this same basic concept to paint the night sky with a myriad of patterns and colours for pure enjoyment. The practise is so integral to our collective sense of celebration that barely an eyelid is batted at the $45,000 per minute price tag attached to the iconic Sydney Harbour new years fireworks.

Many companies want to do things better but are hit with obstacles and blockers. ServiceNow's VP of innovation, Chris Pope, is visiting Australia this week and I spoke with home about how Australia differs from other markets when it comes to trying new technology and what he sees as the blockers to process improvement.

The local healthcare sector has a reputation for spending big on some types of innovation but lagging when it comes to back-end systems and other applications. Electronic record keeping is gaining ground but paper and fax machines remain popular. However, according to a study by analysts Technavio, the global healthcare cloud computing market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of over 20% over the next four years.

Dr Larry Marshall is the CEO of CSIRO. He opened the Data61 Live event held in Melbourne on 28 June 2017. Celebrating Data 61’s first birthday, Marshall says the past can be an amazing teacher.

Juicero is a Silicon Valley start-up that is trying to ride the wave of connected devices by using the surfboard of health. Juicero's value proposition is a "closed loop" service. They produce sealed bags of fruit and vegetables that you load into a US$400 machine (that's Internet connected, of course) and it produces fresh, cold-pressed juice from the contents of the bag. So, what the heck is going on with this company that has attracted $120M in VC funding recently?

There was a time when the hallmarks of a great business were stability, a fat bank balance, and a steady growth trajectory. But today, the name of the game is innovation. And that has resulted in a cottage industry of people supporting new businesses who want to move from an idea to a saleable product or service that a business can be funded on. Annie Parker is the CEO of Lighthouse in Sydney. I spoke with her at the recent AWS Summit about Australia’s innovation culture.

Every year or so, in order to probably distract us from their complete cluelessness when it comes to digital innovation, Australian governments tell us how they plan to support technology companies buy creating our local answer to California’s Silicon Valley. At a recent conference, I had the chance to ask a panel of four senior managers and leaders of Silicon Valley unicorns what they thought governments could do to create environments where tech start ups can flourish.

Van Gogh may now be widely recognised as one of the most influential and creative artists of all time, but he died alone and penniless. Why? Because 100 years ago his canvas' were seen as the hallucinatory original works of a sociopathic recluse. It wasn't until years later, when other artists and critics had defined a new aesthetic criteria for art, that his works were accepted as creative masterpieces.

Despite the majority of SMB agreeing that Australia needs to embrace innovation in order to be successful, only four per cent actually invest money towards it, according to a survey by MYOB.

Aussie companies were responsible for filing just 21% of the total patent applications in Australia last year, with the USA claiming the top spot. To put it another way, non-residents were responsible for most of the innovation taking place in our country. Lift your game, Aussie inventors!

Author Malcolm Gladwell spoke at the recent Intel Focus 2015 event about the need to attack problems in new ways. Although his talk was given at an infosec conference, the lessons he imparted apply to all of us.

The old adage “the customer is always right” has been a persistent one and shapes the way many businesses operate. But is this statement accurate? Right Angle Studio's strategy and insights director Barrie Barton doesn’t think so.

When companies fail, our first instinct is to start pointing fingers. Usually we point them at the people at the top -- the chairman or chief executive. They were in charge, after all; the decisions that drove the company to the wall must have been made by them. Whatever went wrong is their fault. Change the leaders and the problem will go away.

The announcement that Google is to halt sales of its Google Glass augmented-reality spectacles has been interpreted by some people as the end of a pilot project and the start of a new phase of product development, or by others as indicative of failure.

Yesterday, the Commonwealth Bank officially launched out its new 'Innovation Lab' at its Sydney headquarters. How can 679 square metres of meeting and testing space improve its technology development cycle? Check out our photo gallery to find out.

Most people solve a problem by identifying a goal and then pursuing a path directly towards that ideal, but when you ask a successful entrepreneur what to do, you might get a different answer. They don't think in terms of an endpoint; they think of the process.

From the days of the gold rushes, to the banking and mining booms of the last 15 years, Australians have long worried that most of the world's innovation was happening somewhere else. Did our good fortune deter Australians from innovating? As one journalist posed the dilemma: "Do we want to be digging dirt or digging ideas?"

The CSIRO's Digital Productivity Flagship is essentially a thinktank for innovating new ideas -- but what are the barriers to innovation? At yesterday's launch, a panel of experts discussed the problems facing anyone who wants to innovate.