1. Infinite: How Visionary Leaders Transform Today’s Businesses into AI-Forward Companies

by Brian Solis and Dave Wright (Wiley, 2026)

Brian Solis, Head of Global Innovation at ServiceNow and author of eight bestselling books, teams up with ServiceNow innovation leader Dave Wright, with a foreword by ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott.

They introduce the “Infinite Company”: an organisation built with AI at its core rather than bolted on. The book pushes leaders beyond using AI to optimize yesterday’s work and toward redesigning workflows, roles, governance, and how value is created. If you read one book on AI and operating models this year, make it this one.

2. The Transformation Economy: Guiding Customers to Achieve Their Aspirations

by B. Joseph Pine II (Harvard Business Review Press, 2026)

Joe Pine co-authored The Experience Economy, the book that shaped how a generation of leaders thinks about customer experience. This is his exceptional next step.

Pine argues that the highest economic value now comes from helping customers change: to become healthier, wealthier, wiser, or more purposeful. With cases ranging from Noom to Eataly, he offers frameworks for designing and guiding transformation offerings. As AI agents commoditize comparison shopping, value that cannot be reduced to a spec sheet becomes the real advantage.

3. When Machines Become Customers (3rd Edition)

by Don Scheibenreif and Mark Raskino (Gartner, 2025)

Don Scheibenreif, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, has led Gartner’s research on machine customers since 2015. Mark Raskino formerly led Gartner’s CEO research.

The foundational book on AI agents as customers, now updated for agentic AI. It maps the evolution from rule-bound devices to fully autonomous buyers, and explains why machines decide on logic, data, and rules rather than emotion. CEOs surveyed expect up to 20% of revenue to come from machine customers by 2030.

4. Mindshift: Transform Leadership, Drive Innovation, and Reshape the Future

by Brian Solis (Wiley, 2024)

Before Infinite came Mindshift, Solis’s case that transformation fails when leaders change the technology but not the thinking behind it.

It challenges leaders to question inherited assumptions about how organizations work and to lead with curiosity rather than control. Read it alongside Infinite: Mindshift prepares the mindset, Infinite designs the company.

5. Machine Customers: The Evolution Has Begun

by Katja Forbes (2025)

Katja Forbes, the self-described “CX Evolutionist” based between Singapore and Australia, brings decades of cross-industry CX work to the machine customer question.

Drawing on interviews with Don Scheibenreif, Bruce Temkin, and leaders from Salesforce and Qualtrics, she introduces the Machine Customer Experience Strategy Map, five machine customer types, and 30-60-90 day plans. It is the most hands-on companion to Gartner’s book: less about what is coming, more about what to do on Monday.

6. Artificial Intelligence in the Customer Experience

by Juan Carlos Fernández Fernández

Juan Carlos Fernández is CIO at Canarias7, with 30 years in technology leadership, digital strategy, and innovation.

Written from the perspective of a technology leader rather than a vendor, it explores how AI is reshaping customer interactions and the decisions organizations make about them. A grounded, European view that balances the many US-centric titles on this list.

7. Designing Customer Experiences with Soul

by Simon Robinson and Maria Moraes Robinson.

Simon and Maria Moraes Robinson, founders of the Holonomics approach.

The book builds on their earlier work on soulful, values-driven experience design, combining design practice with philosophy and human values across the whole organization. It is the counterweight this list needs: when agents handle the transaction, the human meaning of the experience becomes the differentiator.

8. The Journey to Customer Obsession Series

by Raymond Gerber (2025–2026)

Raymond Gerber co-founded the Institute for Journey Management, founded JourneyCentric-CX, and spent 25+ years at Qualtrics, Thunderhead, Pegasystems, and Chordiant. He holds five patents in journey analytics.

Book 1 offers a CX maturity model and a lifecycle roadmap for making CX an enterprise-wide discipline. Book 2 turns strategy into execution: journey metrics, decisioning, orchestration, and closed-loop feedback. Book 3 distills it all for executives with limited time.

→ Book 1: A Blueprint for CX Maturity and Enterprise Transformation

→ Book 2: A Blueprint for Operationalizing Customer Engagement

→ Book 3: A Leadership Blueprint (Executive Edition)

9. Personalized: Customer Strategy in the Age of AI

by Mark Abraham and David C. Edelman (Harvard Business Review Press, 2024)

Two of the most experienced voices on personalization, from strategy consulting and marketing leadership.

They define five promises of personalization and size the prize at roughly $2 trillion. A practical playbook for turning data and AI into relevance at scale, and the foundation any agent-ready CX strategy will depend on.

10. The AI Empowered Customer Experience

by Simon Kriss (2025)

Simon Kriss is a CX and AI advisor who helps organizations apply AI where it genuinely improves the customer experience.

He offers frameworks for deploying AI in CX while protecting human connection. Ideal for leaders who need a clear starting point before tackling agentic commerce.

11. The 8 Laws of Employee Experience

by Jacob Morgan (Wiley, 2026)

Jacob Morgan, bestselling author and futurist on work and leadership, draws on more than 100 interviews with CHROs.

He reframes employee experience as a value exchange in which employees contribute and grow, and shows how to build a future-ready organization in an AI-driven world. The reminder we keep needing: customer experience never scales beyond employee experience.

12. The Activator Advantage

by Matthew Dixon, Rory Channer, and Karen Freeman (2025)

Matthew Dixon co-authored The Challenger Sale and The Effortless Experience. Here he teams up with Rory Channer and Karen Freeman.

Based on a study of nearly 3,000 partners, they show that “Activators” win long-term clients by proactively bringing value and ideas. When agents handle routine purchasing, proactive human insight is what B2B relationships will run on.

13. How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations

by Carl Benedikt Frey (Princeton University Press, 2025)

Oxford economist Carl Benedikt Frey is known for his influential research on automation and the future of work.

He asks why some societies surge while others stagnate, and argues that institutions and economic structures decide what technology delivers. The big-picture lens every innovation leader needs before betting the company on AI.