ThinkTWENTY20

For the first time in its 36-year history, two authors have been named winners of the National Business Book Award (NBBA) and its $30,000 prize. As announced in a press release dated December 8, 2021, “in an extraordinary year for the award, with its longest list ever of worthy nominees, Stephen R. Bown’s The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson’s Bay Empire and Mark Carney’s Value(s): Building A Better World for All best exemplified the wide range and high calibre of outstanding Canadian business writing.”

The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson’s Bay Empire, published by Doubleday Canada, provides a fresh perspective on Canada’s founding myth. In re-telling the story of the Hudson’s Bay Company and its foundational role in the early development of our country, author Stephen Bown highlights the critical role that collaborative relationships with First Nations played in the venture’s earliest success. He also chronicles how competition, political agendas, economic shifts, and personalities converged to disrupt that fragile balance, ultimately contributing to the disenfranchisement of Indigenous people as Canada became a nation.

After decades at the highest levels of domestic and international economic and political policy making, Mark Carney posits that there is opportunity embedded in disruption, offering a chance to forge a new consensus around common goals. Published by Signal/McClelland & Stewart, Value(s): Building a Better World for All is focused on “mission-oriented capitalism” and the solutions that can better address the complex challenges that have surfaced as the second wave of globalization come to an end and the fourth industrial revolution begins. Among those challenges are climate change, income inequality, a crisis of institutional trust and the urgent need for values-based leadership in the public and private sectors. Carney’s book was reviewed, with much acclaim, in the Fall 2021 issue of ThinkTWENTY20.

For more on the winners of the award and their competitors, see STEPHEN R. BOWN & MARK CARNEY WIN 2021 NATIONAL BUSINESS BOOK AWARD (nbbaward.com)