Financial Times & McKinsey announce shortlist for Business Book of the YEar Award

NEW YORK: 7 September 2016: The Financial Times and McKinsey & Company today publish the shortlist for the 2016 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award. Now in its twelfth year, the award is an essential calendar fixture for authors and the global business community alike. Each year it recognises a work which provides the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues.

For this year’s shortlist, the distinguished judges have chosen the six most influential business books of 2016: 

What Works: Gender Equality by Design by Iris Bohnet (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press)

Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built by Duncan Clark (Harper 360/Harper Collins; Ecco Press/Harper Collins)

Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business by Rana Foroohar (Crown Publishing/Penguin Random House)

The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War by Robert J. Gordon (Princeton University Press)

The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott (Bloomsbury)

The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan by Sebastian Mallaby (Bloomsbury; Penguin Press)

Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, and chair of the judging panel, said: “The remarkable range of books this year include a heavyweight biography of Greenspan, a lively exploration of policy dilemmas around longevity, a historical inquiry into the productivity gap, and an argument for righting the balance between finance and industry in a modern economy. Readers will find much to debate and many practical solutions.”

The winner will be announced at a dinner ceremony on 22 November at the National Gallery in London, co-hosted by Lionel Barber and Dominic Barton, Global Managing Director of McKinsey & Company. Baroness Dido Harding, CEO of the TalkTalk Group, will give the keynote speech. The winner of the Business Book of the Year Award 2016 will be awarded £30,000, and £10,000 will be awarded to each of the remaining shortlisted books.

Previous Business Book of the Year winners include: 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, as 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 #BBYA16.