“Awards Should Go to the Right Person”, SME Promotion Center Director

VCCI annually presents the Award for Outstanding Entrepreneurs on the occasion of Vietnam Entrepreneurs Day, October 13   

As the Director of the Small and Medium Enterprises Promotion Centre (SMEPC) under the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), a jury member of ASEAN Business Award (ABA) and an organiser of the Golden V Awards (awards for creative product designs), Ms Pham Thu Hang has an exclusive talk with Vietnam Business Forum’s reporter Thu Huyen.a

To create a prestigious award, an organiser must introduce persuasive criteria and a capable jury. The more rigorous and scientific the criteria are, the more prestigious the award is. Score givers must be impartial and knowledgeable to create a successful awarding. Possibly, the society, at a certain time or from a certain angle, feels that this product or this business is not deserving of the award but an impartial and knowledgeable jury will direct the society to know what product or company is good.

 

Besides, when companies take their products to run for the award, they must know how prestigious the award is, how scientific it is organised and what objectives it heads for. Enterprises should not run for superficial things but very carefully find out who will judge and evaluate their products to decide whether to participate in the award or not. Of course, joining enterprises must have achievements, prepare to file records and have evidences for their capacities and information declared. For example, one of the very strict conditions of the ASEAN Business Award is the filing of audited financial statements for three straight years. This is one of the important conditions of the ASEAN Business Award 2007 and is one of the reasons why two thirds of Vietnamese enterprises attending businesses are disqualified in the first round.

 

In fact, this is due to the nature of the award. The market can be a decisive factor but is the market randomly selected or not? For example, the vote through the internet means only internet users can do it while others do not and internet users cannot represent the entire market. Or, when the Golden V Awards is organised with the aim of promoting handicraft exports, the jury must include buyers and importers from the EU, Japanese, US markets, not sellers and domestic consumers. Thus, candidate products of the Golden V Awards must fit cultures and receive good remarks in importing countries like the US or Europe. Therefore, such products depicting the image of bamboo or buffalo etc. will hardly win the award although they are sellable in these markets and they can be sold as souvenirs for tourists. The targets of the Golden V Award are the export markets, not importers. Award organisers have to set out the objectives of the award from which they can determine new criteria for voters and marking processes to ensure strict and meticulous marking and eliminate any disadvantages or doubts about the transparency of organising activities. For instance, one of the requirements of the organising board for Golden V Award is that candidate enterprises must be responsible for the copyright of their products designs. This will also encourage businesses to register for their industrial design before introducing it to the market and limit the risk of their industrial designs and product design being copied when they display it to the public.  

However, the objectivity of many awards depends on organisers. Several organisers for national brand names are turned out to be very small companies and they are not qualified for hosting such events.  

In reality, small companies supported by large corporations or organisations to host important events are not rare phenomena and this is considered a business trick in the market economy mechanism. This belongs to the relation between those small entities with event patrons. The cause for low quality awards comes from poor performance of authorised companies, wrong selecting of organisers by patrons, and improper authoritative supervision over the event. The public just looks at patrons units and large companies while overlooking small organisers without necessary capacity and prestige to host important awards. In fact, an unsuccessful award will harm positions and roles of patronisers and the responsibility for the unsuccessfulness will belong to them. They will lose the trust of enterprises, consumers and the market.

An award needs extremely meticulous preparations. For example, when the Golden V Award is launched, the organisers have to widely announce the organisers, steering board, marking process, awarding structure, marking criteria, jury members and patrons. Even, the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) also pays fees to International Council of Societies of Industrial Design to evaluate the awarding process to ensure that the award is in line with international practices. In other words, in addition to a standard procedure, the award also needs a highly professional unit in the field of competition to organize the process.

Each award has its own criteria; thus companies need to consider their real strengths in competing areas to join suitable competitions, not all. For instance, when they register for creativity awards, they must have many patents and inventions to beat other units. Hopefully, enterprises will follow those criteria to develop and deserve the award.