Bracken Bower Prize


The Financial Times and McKinsey Bracken Bower Prize is a prestigious annual award given to the best business book proposal of the year by a young business 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.'
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. The prize is worth and is presented at the same time as the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award.
Several previous winners and finalists of the contest landed book deals with major publishers. 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 former derivates trader Christopher Clearfield and University of Toronto professor András Tilcsik, the winners of the 2015 prize. From the same cohort, 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. In March 2019 Kogan Page will publish Blockchain Babel by , a finalist in 2016. The prize also led to a publishing deal for Saadia Zahidi, the 2014 Bracken Bower winner; Nation Books acquired a book based on her proposal, Womenomics in the Muslim World, in 2015. In April 2017, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt published venture capitalist Scott Hartley's book, , a 2016 Bracken Bower Prize Finalist, subsequent Financial Times Business Book of the Month, and mention among the longlist for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year 2017. Published in paperback by Mariner Books, it has been acquired by Penguin Random House in India, and translated into and .

Winners and shortlist

Blue Ribbon = winner Finalists Shortlist
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014