Bracken Bower Prize

Financial Times and McKinsey Bracken Bower Prize
Awarded forBest business book proposal by an author under 35
Sponsored byFinancial Times
McKinsey & Company
LocationLondon / New York
Reward(s)£15,000
First awarded2014

The Financial Times and McKinsey Bracken Bower Prize (or simply the Bracken Bower Prize) is an annual award given to the best business book proposal of the year by a young writer, as determined by the Financial Times and McKinsey & Company. It aims to find the "best proposal for a book about the challenges and opportunities of growth by an author aged under 35".[1]

Established in 2014, the prize is named after Brendan Bracken, chairman of the Financial Times from 1945 to 1958, and Marvin Bower, managing director of McKinsey from 1950 to 1967.[2] The prize is worth £15,000 and is presented at the same time as the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award.[3]

Several previous winners and finalists of the contest have landed book deals with major publishers.[4][5] Siddarth Shrikanth, finalist for the 2020 prize, secured publishing deals with Duckworth Books and Penguin Random House for his book, The Case for Nature.[6][7] Winner of the 2019 Prize, Jonathan Hillman had his book on China's global infrastructure expansion, The Digital Silk Road: China's Quest to Wire the World and Win the Future, published by Harper Business.[8] Cambridge University Press published the book by 2018 Prize Winner Andrew Leon Hanna, 25 Million Sparks: The Untold Story of Refugee Entrepreneurs, which tells the story of three Syrian women entrepreneurs in the Za'atari refugee camp and of refugee entrepreneurs around the world.[9][10] From the same cohort, finalist Christian Busch had his book, published as The Serendipity Mindset: The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck, released by Riverhead Books.

From the 2016 cohort, Kogan Page published Blockchain Babel: The Crypto Craze and the Challenge to Business by finalist Igor Pejic.[11][12] Houghton Mifflin Harcourt published venture capitalist and Bracken Bower finalist Scott Hartley's book, The Fuzzy and the Techie: Why the Liberal Arts Will Rule the Digital World, a Financial Times Business Book of the Month that was mentioned on the longlist for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award in 2017.[13][14] Published in paperback by Mariner Books, it has been acquired by Penguin Random House in India, and translated into Portuguese and Korean.[15][16][17]

Among the 2015 cohort, Penguin Press agreed to publish Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do About It, a book about the changing nature of failure in business and life, by 2015 Prize Winners and former derivates trader Christopher Clearfield and University of Toronto professor András Tilcsik.[18][19][4] Meltdown won Canada's National Business Book Award in 2019. Irene Yuan Sun's short-listed proposal for a book about China's economic role in Africa was picked up by Harvard Business Review Press.[19]

The prize also led to a publishing deal for Saadia Zahidi, the first-ever Bracken Bower Prize winner in 2014; Nation Books acquired a book based on her proposal, Womenomics in the Muslim World, in 2015, and it was retitled Fifty Million Rising: The New Generation of Working Women Transforming the Muslim World.[4]

  1. ^ "Financial Times and McKinsey: The Bracken Bower Prize" (PDF). Financial Times. Retrieved 30 October 2015.
  2. ^ "Financial Times and McKinsey & Company launch the 2014 Business Book of the Year Award". Financial Times. Retrieved 30 December 2015.
  3. ^ "FT/McKinsey announce the Bracken Bower Prize finalists". Financial Times. Retrieved 30 December 2015.
  4. ^ a b c "Book Trade Announcements - Submissions Invited For The 2016 Bracken Bower Prize". www.booktrade.info. 25 April 2016. Archived from the original on 10 June 2016. Retrieved 16 May 2016.
  5. ^ Hill, Andrew (22 October 2018). "Bracken Bower Prize 2018: the shortlist". Financial Times. Retrieved 2 November 2018.
  6. ^ "Announcing a trailblazing new book on securing our natural capital". Penguin Random House India. Retrieved 31 December 2022.
  7. ^ "Duckworth signs "rising star" Shrikanth's debut". The Bookseller. Retrieved 31 December 2022.
  8. ^ "A gripping account of China's rise as a tech superpower". Financial Times. 21 March 2022. Retrieved 26 June 2022.
  9. ^ "Bracken Bower Prize 2021 — the shortlist". Financial Times. 1 November 2021. Retrieved 26 June 2022.
  10. ^ "Resilience through unspeakable pain and strife". today.duke.edu. 8 March 2022. Retrieved 26 June 2022.
  11. ^ Hill, Andrew (22 October 2018). "Bracken Bower Prize 2018: the shortlist". Financial Times. Retrieved 2 November 2018.
  12. ^ "Books". igorpejic.net. Retrieved 2 November 2018.[permanent dead link]
  13. ^ "Excerpts from the three proposals". Financial Times. Retrieved 28 March 2018.
  14. ^ Hill, Andrew. "Business Book of the Year 2017 — the longlist". Financial Times. Retrieved 28 March 2018.
  15. ^ "The Fuzzy and the Techie: Why the Liberal Arts Will Rule the Digital World". www.hmhco.com/. Retrieved 28 March 2018.
  16. ^ "The Fuzzy and the Techie". www.penguin.co.in. Retrieved 28 March 2018.
  17. ^ "O Fuzzy E O Techie". www.bei.com.br/. Retrieved 28 March 2018.
  18. ^ Clearfield, Author Chris; Tilcsik, András (18 November 2015). "Rethinking the Unthinkable". Rethink Risk–The Blog. Retrieved 16 May 2016. {{cite web}}: |first1= has generic name (help)
  19. ^ a b Hill, Andrew. "FT/McKinsey contest helps business book hopefuls land deals". Financial Times. ISSN 0307-1766. Retrieved 16 May 2016.