As the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award reaches its 20th year, Martin C.W. Walker interviews senior business writer at the Financial Times Andrew Hill about the purpose of the prize, its history and what makes a good business book.

About to embark on a business trip and looking for something to read? Whether you want to learn how to improve your business or just be entertained, the choice at even the smallest airport bookshop can be intimidatingly large. Shopping for a business book online can be even harder, with thousands of titles published each year. Should I go for the latest celebrity CEO book to get too-good-to-be-true tips on how to become a billionaire? Or perhaps a book on a quirky piece of economic history, like zinc production through the centuries (too niche)? What about one of those “how to” books, with easy-to-follow checklists written by former management consultants with Harvard MBAs and years’ experience producing PowerPoints for McKinsey. They might have some good insights, but too many bullet points can be a little dry.

For almost twenty years the Financial Times (FT) has been making the selection process of for business-minded readers a little easier through its Business Book of the Year Award. I spoke to Andrew Hill of the FT about the challenges of organising the prize and its history.

What was the origin of the prize? 

Originally another organisation approached the FT about becoming involved in a business books prize, but the editor thought the FT could organised its own award. The prize ran for a few years in the 90s, but it really only started in its current format in the 2000s, when I was given responsibility for managing the whole process. This year will see the 20th annual award of the prize, which has been sponsored by Schroders since 2023.

What is its main objective? 

We see the prize as having the same overall objective as the FT: curating the news for busy businesspeople, so they know what to read. It’s not just about giving a prize at the end. There is a reason we have a longlist, a shortlist and the final prize winner. The longlist is for readers that have the most time for reading, the shortlist of six is those with less time and the ultimate prize winner is the one book people really should read over the course of the year, no matter how busy they are. Surprisingly it is the longlist that gets the most attention and clicks. 

How do you go about selecting books? 

We start with a top-down search. We look at books that have already been well reviewed, any book that is a causing a buzz, even pre-publication. We also take a bottom-up approach, trawling through publishers’ catalogues of new books. Usually, we receive about 600 entries. With a team of 10 to 12 colleagues, we work through the entries until we get down to about 50-100 books. Sometimes we will draw on FT experts in specific areas to review books, and then draw up the longlist (16 books this year) that is submitted to our panel of judges. They select six for the shortlist and eventually select an overall winner.

Some of the best business books bridge the divide between academia and businesspeople

What qualities are you looking for in a prize winner?

There are a few simple exclusions: no anthologies, no second editions and no books written by FT staff or contractors. The potential range of books has been broadened over the years to include biographies and economic history but fundamentally all books need to be relevant to modern business. Books have to be well written, a compelling read and enjoyable. Since 2009 an explicit criterion has been added to stand the test of time. 

What made the books on this year’s shortlist stand out to the judges? 

John Kay’s The Corporation in the Twenty-First Century: Why (almost) everything we are told about business is wrong is vigorously researched, covers some very topical areas related to the state of corporations, such as the impact, often negative, of the shareholder value movement. It is also very good at explaining the reality of business to people who are not in business.  

Tribalism is always in the news these days, particularly in relationship to politics and the increasingly partisan divisions in society. In Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together, cultural psychologist Michael Morris creates a very compelling account of how tribalism can both divide us but how we can also harness a fundamental human instinct to help us work together to achieve common goals. 

Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race That Will Change the World by Parmy Olson is very timely and is an engrossing account of the organisations that created tools based on generative AI. As account of events rather than an amplification of the hype, it is more likely to stand the test of time than other recent books about AI. 

Andrew Scott’s The Longevity Imperative: Building a Better Society for Healthier, Longer Lives avoids the current trend for dwelling on demographic disaster. It looks at the positives that can come from living longer lives and describes how the world needs to create what he calls an “evergreen agenda” to make the most of “the gift of time.” 

Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Future of War by Raj Shah and Christopher Kirchhoff, describes how the Pentagon set up a special unit to harness the technological innovations coming out for Silicon Valley for weapons development. Innovations in everything from drones to AI that US Military had underutilised. Although it is about weapons development it is as much a book about how to convince people in a large bureaucracy to change and find cost effective workarounds. 

Growth: A Reckoning by Daniel Susskind is a very accessible book that looks at the economics of growth. Susskind’s principle is that consequences of growth are not inherently good or bad. It can have both positive and negative consequences. The challenge is to derive the greatest benefits from economic growth by driving it through genuine innovation.

There seem to be more women writing business books today compared to the early days of the prize, though it is still the case that only 25 per cent of the books entered are by women

What do you think of the quality of business books overall, particularly those that are looking at evidence rather than are just telling stories? 

There are plenty of books that just do not flow or where it is unlikely the reader it will get to the end. There is often a divide between the academic focused books about business and books that explain business issues to a general audience. Publishers often seem to shy away from books with nuance. However, some of the best business books bridge the divide between academia and businesspeople. Last year’s winner was Right Kind of Wrong by Amy C. Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School, which was based on decades of research but was still a highly accessible read. 

Has anything significant changed about business books over the almost two decades of the prize? 

There seem to be more women writing business books today compared to the early days of the prize, though it is still the case that only 25 per cent of the books entered are by women. The topics seem to change over time to reflect public interest. Recently there have been, perhaps surprisingly, fewer good books about China or globalisation and, of course, more focused on technology. Celebrity CEO books still feature among the entries, though few get through. 

In the corporate world it is far too common to either get swept up in hype cycles or get trapped in following the dogma of endlessly recycled bad ideas. The huge effort the FT puts into selecting the best of current business writing is a great way to avoid both problems, as well as to help decide what book to pick at the airport bookshop.  

Note: This interview gives the views of the interviewer and interviewee, not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Image: ymgerman on Shutterstock.

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