Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat, an exuberant account of the challenges and benefits of globalisation, has won the inaugural Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.

Judges of the £30,000 prize, meeting on Monday at the FT’s headquarters in London, decided that Friedman’s book – a best-seller worldwide – provided “the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues” of any title published in English in the past year.