Financial Times and Schroders announce the shortlist for the 2023 Business Book of the Year Award

The Financial Times and Schroders today announced the shortlist for the 2023 Business Book of the Year Award. Now in its nineteenth year, the award is an essential calendar fixture for authors, publishers and the global business community. Each year it recognises a book which provides the ‘most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues’.

This year’s shortlisted books, selected by the nine distinguished judges (see below) are: 

Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future by Ed Conway, WH Allen (UK), Alfred A. Knopf (US)

Right Kind of Wrong: Why Learning to Fail Can Teach Us to Thrive by Amy Edmondson, Cornerstone Press (UK), Atria (US)

How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors Behind Every Successful Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner, Macmillan (UK), Currency (US)

Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, Simon & Schuster (UK & US)

Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara, St Martin's Press (UK & US)

The Coming Wave: AI, Power and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma by Mustafa Suleyman with Michael Bhaskar, The Bodley Head (UK), Crown (US)

FT Editor Roula Khalaf said: “This year’s shortlist covers some of the biggest issues of our time – from the advance of artificial intelligence to  the relentless pressure on natural resources – in books that are exceptionally well researched and reported. Selecting finalists from a strong longlist was hard, but the judges have picked six exciting, engaging and important titles that together provide a highly readable guide to the future of business.”

Schroders Group Chief Executive Peter Harrison said: “I am delighted that for this first year of our partnership with the FT, we have chosen a shortlist that sheds light on the ways in which business intersects with global economics and politics and that offers solutions to the pressing challenges facing executives and policymakers at a time of profound disruption and uncertainty. These are books that are compelling, enjoyable and, above all, distinguished by writing of the highest quality.”

The judging panel, chaired by Roula Khalaf, comprises:

• Mimi Alemayehou, Founder and Managing Partner, Semai Ventures LLC

• Daisuke Arakawa, Managing Director, Nikkei Inc.

• Mitchell Baker, Chief Executive Officer, Mozilla Corporation, Chairwoman, Mozilla Foundation

• Peter Harrison, Group Chief Executive, Schroders

• Herminia Ibarra, Charles Handy Professor of Organisational Behaviour, London Business School

• James Kondo, Chairman, International House of Japan

• Randall Kroszner, Norman R. Bobins Professor of Economics, University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business

• Shriti Vadera, Chair, Prudential Plc and Royal Shakespeare Company
  

The winner of the 2023 Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award will be announced on 4 December at an event hosted by FT Editor Roula Khalaf, Schroders Group Chief Executive Peter Harrison and Nikkei Inc. Managing Director Daisuke Arakawa. The winner will receive £30,000 and the author(s) of each of the remaining shortlisted books will be awarded £10,000.

Previous Business Book of the Year winners include: Chris Miller for Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology (2022); Nicole Perlroth for This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race (2021); Sarah Frier for No Filter: The Inside Story of How Instagram Transformed Business, Celebrity and Our Culture (2020); Caroline Criado Perez for Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men (2019); John Carreyrou for Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (2018); Amy Goldstein for Janesville: An American Story (2017); Sebastian Mallaby for The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan (2016); Martin Ford for Rise of the Robots (2015); Thomas Piketty for Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014); Brad Stone for The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon (2013); Steve Coll for Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power (2012); Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo for Poor Economics (2011); Raghuram Rajan for Fault Lines (2010); Liaquat Ahamed for The Lords of Finance (2009); Mohamed El-Erian for When Markets Collide (2008); William D. Cohan for The Last Tycoons (2007); James Kynge for China Shakes the World (2006); and Thomas Friedman, the inaugural award winner in 2005, for The World is Flat.

To learn more about the award, visit ft.com/bookaward and follow the conversation at #BBYA23.

Photographs of the authors and books on the 2023 shortlist can be downloaded here.