The Financial Times and Schroders today announce 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.
For further information please contact:
UK: Katrina Power
T: +44 (0) 79639 62538
Catherine Goacher, Financial Times
M +44 (0) 77724 25521
US: Nick Davies, Fortier Public Relations
T: +1 914-356-5171
Notes to editors on The Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award
Entry forms and details of the terms and conditions are available from www.ft.com/bookaward. The annual award aims to identify the book that provides the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues, including management, finance and economics. The shortlist of six titles was chosen from a longlist of 16. The winner will be announced on 4 December 2023. Submissions are invited from publishers or bona fide imprints based in any country.
Eligibility
Books must be published for the first time in the English language, or in English translation, between 16 November 2022 and 15 November 2023. There is no limit to the number of submissions from each publisher/imprint, provided they fit the criteria, and books from all genres except anthologies are eligible. There are no restrictions of gender, age or nationality of authors. Authors who are current employees of the Financial Times or the close relatives of such employees, are not eligible.
About the Financial Times
The Financial Times is one of the world’s leading business news organisations, recognised internationally for its authority, integrity and accuracy. The FT has a record paying readership of 1.2 million, more than one million of which are digital subscriptions. It is part of Nikkei Inc., which provides a broad range of information, news and services for the global business community.
About Schroders plc
Founded in 1804, Schroders is a global investment management firm with £726.1 billion (€846.1 billion; $923.1 billion) assets under management, as of 30 June 2023. Schroders continues to deliver strong financial results in ever challenging market conditions, with a market capitalisation of circa £7 billion and over 6,100 employees across 38 locations. The founding family remains a core shareholder, holding approximately 44% of Schroders’ shares.
Schroders has benefited from a diverse business model of by geography, asset class and client type. It offers innovative products and solutions across four core growing business areas: asset management, solutions, Schroders Capital (private assets) and wealth management. Clients include insurance companies, pension schemes, sovereign wealth funds, high net worth individuals and foundations. Schroders also manages assets for end clients as part of its relationships with distributors, financial advisers, and online platforms.
Schroders aims to provide excellent investment performance to clients through active management. It also channels capital into sustainable and durable businesses to accelerate positive change in the world. Schroders’ business philosophy is based on the belief that if we deliver for clients, we will deliver for our shareholders and other stakeholders.
Issued by Schroder Investment Management Limited. Registration No 1893220 England. Authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. For regular updates by email please register online at www.schroders.com for our alerting service.
About Nikkei
Founded in Japan in 1876, Nikkei has grown into one of the world’s largest independent media groups, with approximately 2.4 million paid subscribers in Japan. Our flagship English-language publication, Nikkei Asia, provides comprehensive pan-Asian reporting that serves as a crucial decision-making tool for our readers. In 2015, Nikkei expanded its international presence by acquiring the Financial Times, another global media brand. With the purpose of offering “better insights for a better world,” we never pander to power and are committed to delivering accurate and fact-based economic news. Our daily mission is to provide equitable, unbiased content that enables our readers across the globe to make better decisions.
THE SHORTLIST FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES AND SCHRODERS BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2023
Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future by Ed Conway, WH Allen (UK), Alfred A. Knopf (US)
Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium. They built our world, and they will transform our future.
These are the six most crucial substances in human history. They took us from the Dark Ages to the present day. They power our computers and phones, build our homes and offices, and create life-saving medicines. But most of us take them completely for granted.
In Material World, Ed Conway travels the globe – from the sweltering depths of the deepest mine in Europe, to spotless silicon chip factories in Taiwan, to the eerie green pools where lithium originates - to uncover a secret world we rarely see. Revealing the true marvel of these substances, he follows the mind-boggling journeys, miraculous processes and little-known companies that turn the raw materials we all need into products of astonishing complexity.
As we wrestle with climate change, energy crises and the threat of new global conflict, Conway shows why these substances matter more than ever before, and how the hidden battle to control them will shape our geopolitical future. This is the story of civilization – our ambitions and glory, innovations and appetites – from a new perspective: literally from the ground up.
Right Kind of Wrong: Why Learning to Fail Can Teach Us to Thrive by Amy Edmondson, Cornerstone Press (UK), Atria (US)
Forget 'fail fast, fail often'. This revolutionary book reveals how we get failure wrong – and how to get it right.
We all fail sometimes. Now, a world-leading Harvard professor reveals how these failures can lead us to happier, more successful lives – provided we know how to learn from them.
We used to think of failure as a problem, to be avoided at all costs. Now, we're often told that failure is desirable – that we must 'fail fast, fail often'. The trouble is, neither approach distinguishes the good failures from the bad. As a result, we miss the opportunity to fail well.
Here, Amy Edmondson – the world's most influential organisational psychologist – reveals how we get failure wrong, and how to get it right. She draws on a lifetime's research into the science of 'psychological safety' to show that the most successful cultures are those in which you can fail openly, without your mistakes being held against you. She introduces the three archetypes of failure – simple, complex and intelligent – and explains how to harness the revolutionary potential of the good ones (and eliminate the bad). And she tells vivid stories ranging from the history of open heart surgery to the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster, all to ask a simple, provocative question: What if it is only by learning to fail that we can hope to truly succeed?
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)
Nothing is more inspiring than a big vision that becomes a triumphant new reality. Think of how Apple’s iPod went from a project with a single employee to an enormously successful product launch in eleven months. But they are the exception. Consider how London’s Crossrail project delivered five years late and billions overbudget. More modest endeavours, whether launching a small business, organizing a conference, or just finishing a work project on time, also commonly fail. Why?
Understanding what distinguishes the triumphs from the failures has been the life’s work of Oxford professor Bent Flyvbjerg. In How Big Things Get Done, he identifies the errors that lead projects to fail, and the research-based principles that will make yours succeed:
- Understand your odds. If you don't know them, you won't win.
- Plan slow, act fast. Getting to the action quick feels right. But it's wrong.
- Think right to left. Start with your goal, then identify the steps to get there.
- Find your Lego. Big is best built from small.
- Master the unknown unknowns. Most think they can't, so they fail. Flyvbjerg shows how you can.
Full of vivid examples ranging from the building of the Sydney Opera House to the making of the latest Pixar blockbusters, How Big Things Get Done reveals how to get any ambitious project done—on time and on budget.
Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, Simon & Schuster (UK & US)
Epic feats. Epic failures. An epic story.
Walter Isaacson charts Elon Musk’s journey from humble beginnings to one of the wealthiest people on the planet – but is Musk a genius or a jerk?
From the author of Steve Jobs and other bestselling biographies, this is the astonishingly intimate story of Elon Musk, the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era – a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration and artificial intelligence. Oh, and took over Twitter.
When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was in the hospital for a week. But the physical scars were minor compared to the emotional ones inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue and charismatic fantasist.
His father’s impact on his psyche would linger. He developed into a tough yet vulnerable man-child with an exceedingly high tolerance for risk, a craving for drama, an epic sense of mission, and a maniacal intensity that was callous and at times destructive.
At the beginning of 2022 – after a year marked by SpaceX launching thirty-one rockets into orbit, Tesla selling a million cars, and him becoming the richest man on earth – Musk spoke ruefully about his compulsion to stir up dramas. ‘I need to shift my mindset away from being in crisis mode, which it has been for about fourteen years now, or arguably most of my life,’ he said.
It was a wistful comment, not a New Year’s resolution. Even as he said it, he was secretly buying up shares of Twitter, the world’s ultimate playground. Over the years, whenever he was in a dark place, his mind went back to being bullied on the playground. Now he had the chance to own the playground.
For two years, Walter Isaacson had unprecedented access. He shadowed Musk, attended his meetings, walked his factories with him and spent hours interviewing him, his family, friends, coworkers and adversaries. The result is the revealing inside story, filled with amazing tales of triumphs and turmoil, that addresses the question: are the demons that drive Musk also what it takes to drive innovation and progress?
Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara, St Martin's Press (UK & US)
Cobalt Red is the searing, first-ever exposé of the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining, as told through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves. Activist and researcher Siddharth Kara has travelled deep into cobalt territory to document the testimonies of the people living, working, and dying for cobalt. To uncover the truth about brutal mining practices, Kara investigated militia-controlled mining areas, traced the supply chain of child-mined cobalt from toxic pits to consumer-facing tech giants, and gathered shocking testimonies of people who endure immense suffering and even die mining cobalt.
Cobalt is an essential component to every lithium-ion rechargeable battery made today, the batteries that power our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and electric vehicles. Roughly 75 percent of the world’s supply of cobalt is mined in the Congo, often by peasants and children in sub-human conditions. Billions of people in the world cannot conduct their daily lives without participating in a human rights and environmental catastrophe in the Congo. In this stark and crucial book, Kara argues that we must all care about what is happening in the Congo – because we are all implicated.
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)
An urgent warning of the unprecedented risks that AI and other fast-developing technologies pose to global order, and how we might contain them while we have the chance – from a co-founder of the pioneering artificial intelligence company DeepMind.
We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change.
Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organise your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy.
None of us are prepared.
As co-founder of the pioneering AI company DeepMind, part of Google, Mustafa Suleyman has been at the centre of this revolution. The coming decade, he argues, will be defined by this wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new technologies.
In The Coming Wave, Suleyman shows how these forces will create immense prosperity but also threaten the nation-state, the foundation of global order. As our fragile governments sleepwalk into disaster, we face an existential dilemma: unprecedented harms on one side, the threat of overbearing surveillance on the other.
Can we forge a narrow path between catastrophe and dystopia?
This groundbreaking book from the ultimate AI insider establishes ‘the containment problem’ – the task of maintaining control over powerful technologies – as the essential challenge of our age.