Business Books

If you like nonfiction books that will get you up to speed with what's going on in the world, the Financial Times annual book prize is a great place to start. If you run a business, one or two useful books also feature. Andrew Hill, the newspaper's senior business writer, talks us through the books that made the 2023 shortlist, from cobalt extraction in the Congo to how to manage the AI genie that's out of the bottle and coming towards us at speed.

Machine learning uses data to predict outcomes, explains Eric Siegel, a former professor at Columbia who now advises companies on deploying it in their business. Unlike artificial intelligence, it's a real technology with a proven track record, he says. He recommends practical books on machine learning that are accessible to the layperson and useful to anyone looking to use it in their business or organization.

What are the best books to read if you want to be an entrepreneur? Oxford Saïd Business School's Thomas Hellmann, DP World Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, shares his top five books—and explains what entrepreneurs can learn from them.

The long-term interests of business often coincide with the long-term interests of nature and society but the short-term interests are a different story, says Vincent Stanley of Patagonia, a multi-billion dollar apparel company owned by a non-profit trust. He recommends five books on sustainable, ethical business, showing that a stock price needn't be a company's primary product.

For its annual book award, the Financial Times looks beyond books that might be filed under business in a bookshop, picking out books that are compelling and enjoyable, explains Andrew Hill, the newspaper's senior business writer. He talks us through the 2022 shortlist: books that shine a light on obscure but immensely important companies or industries, or address some of the bigger challenges facing our capitalist economies.

Running a successful business is an endless series of impossible challenges, a constant mix of terror and euphoria, explains Brian O'Kelley, co-founder of the billion-dollar ad tech company AppNexus and now at Scope3. He tells us which books every entrepreneur needs to read and why it's so helpful to learn from those who have gone before.

Good decision-making is a crucial skill not only in business but in life. In this interview, entrepreneur, investor and poker player Sebastian Park advises how to make good decisions in a world of uncertainty, how to evaluate past decisions for future improvement, and how fiction can help us reflect on the choices we make.

From the classroom to the boardroom, everybody tries (and sometimes fails) to be liked and admired by others. In this interview, Övül Sezer—Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations at Cornell University—recommends five books that can help you make a good impression on everybody, including yourself.

As the world turns to electric vehicles and renewable energy to help stave off a climate crisis, there will be huge changes for individuals, industries and even the world geopolitical order. Lukasz Bednarski, a battery analyst, former rare metals trader, and author of Lithium, The Global Race for Battery Dominance, talks us through some of the books that shed light on what's going on, from the cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo to the high-tech labs where the latest battery technology is being developed.

Every year the Financial Times's management editor, Andrew Hill, helps organize its 'Business Book of the Year' award, which celebrates outstanding books relating to business in the broadest sense. Here, he talks us through the 2021 shortlist, six books that will draw you in and open your eyes to how events happening in the world of business affect all of us–sometimes in very profound ways.