Innovative Solutions bags major award

Innovative Solutions Group has bagged the prestigious Innovation Leadership Award. This is in recognition of the South African company’s extraordinary growth accomplishments, even during the pandemic. The award is bestowed on recipients who have made a difference in the lives of others by recognising the quality of their work, their global reach, outlook, and their ability to contribute to social change.

“Innovation is the foundation of business, and those that embrace modernisation rather than avoid it will be better positioned to reap the benefits,” noted Arnoux Maré, CEO of Innovative Solutions Group, speaking at the recent virtual Africa Leadership Awards event.

Maré received this notable award for his new subsidiary called Innovative Learning Solutions, which he successfully launched last year and is one of the largest driver training centres in Africa today. The facility provides training and professional assessments for Code 10 and 14 truck, bus and taxi drivers.

“Recognising the threat to supply chains, we launched this training centre during lockdown to ensure that we could continue to train and upskill truck drivers even during the pandemic. We knew that this service was vital to ensuring that the essential goods and cargo needed by our country and the countries that border us were seamlessly delivered despite the many challenges of Covid-19,” Maré said.

Significantly, even before the Innovative Learning Solutions training centre was officially launched, some 250 truck drivers had been trained by the company to meet the high demand for transportation services.

Innovation is pivotal

According to a McKinsey Global Innovation Survey, although 84% of executives agree that innovation is important to growth strategy, only 6% are satisfied with innovation performance.

“Most companies understand the importance of innovation but fall short when it comes to execution. For any innovation activity to deliver true value, it must be aligned with a company’s business strategy and have proper management, tools, metrics and people to achieve it. Otherwise, even the greatest ideas can result in an organisation pointlessly spinning its wheels,” explained Maré.  

The African Leadership Awards has been running since 2011, celebrating the continent’s achievers, super-achievers and future business leaders. It is attended by high-profile corporate leaders from across Africa, with over 20 award categories recognising and acknowledging leaders for successfully steering their organisations through turbulent times, applying innovative solutions to grow and strengthen their companies, and honouring their contributions towards various countries post-recession economic development.