THE BRACKEN BOWER PRIZE
about the prize
The Bracken Bower Prize is named after Brendan Bracken, Chairman of the FT from 1945 to 1958, and Marvin Bower, Managing Director of McKinsey & Company from 1950 to 1967, who were instrumental in laying the foundation for the present day success of the two institutions. The prize aims to encourage young writers and researchers to identify and analyse the business trends of the future.
The annual prize will be awarded to the best proposal. The judges will favour authors who write with knowledge, creativity, originality and style and whose proposed books promise to break new ground, or examine pressing business challenges in original ways.
Only writers who are under 35 on November 30, 2020 will be eligible. They can be a published author, but the proposal itself must be original and must not have been previously submitted to a publisher.
The Bracken Bower Prize will be presented at the Business Book of the Year Award event on December 1.
Stephen Boyle leads the data design team at Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) where he helps to set strategy and direction for the data function. He is interested in how big data and technology are changing both finance and people’s experience of it. He is particularly focussed on how banks can make the most of the huge amount of data they hold to benefit their customers and stakeholders while maintaining robust privacy protections, ideas he’s exploring as part of his part-time MBA at Henley Business School. Originally from Dublin, Ireland, Stephen moved to America for two years in 2009 after graduating with a master’s degree in economic science from University College Dublin. He was a communications lecturer and coached the debating team at the University of Vermont, a job he secured after a successful time as a university debater, winning the Irish Times national championships, the Yale Intervarsity competition and the gold medal of the Literary & Historical Society. Stephen moved to London, England in 2011, taking up a job with Accenture as a management consultant before moving to LBG. He lives in south-east London with his wife Anna. His hobbies include cookery, photography, playing football badly and supporting Liverpool ardently.
JUDGES
2019 Bracken Bower Prize Winner - book proposal PUBLISHED
AUTHOR: JONATHAN HILLMAN
Yale University Press (US) & (UK)
China’s Belt and Road Initiative is the world’s most ambitious and misunderstood geoeconomic vision. To carry out President Xi Jinping’s flagship foreign-policy effort, China promises to spend over one trillion dollars for new ports, railways, fiber-optic cables, power plants, and other connections. The plan touches more than one hundred and thirty countries and has expanded into the Arctic, cyberspace, and even outer space. Beijing says that it is promoting global development, but Washington warns that it is charting a path to global dominance.
Taking readers on a journey to China’s projects in Asia, Europe, and Africa, Jonathan E. Hillman reveals how this grand vision is unfolding. As China pushes beyond its borders and deep into dangerous territory, it is repeating the mistakes of the great powers that came before it, Hillman argues. If China succeeds, it will remake the world and place itself at the center of everything. But Xi may be overreaching: all roads do not yet lead to Beijing.
2019 WINNER: The Sinolarity, JONATHAN HILLMAN
2018 WINNER: Twenty-Five Million Sparks, ANDREW LEON HANNA
2017 WINNER: The New Geography of Innovation, MEHRAN GUL
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