A new award was launched yesterday to recognise businesses that manage to transform themselves to become innovative and future-ready.

Known as the Special Recognition Award - Enterprise Transformation, it is part of the Enterprise 50 (E50) Awards line-up for this year. Organised by KPMG and The Business Times, the E50 Awards have become the authoritative list of the 50 most enterprising, privately held local firms in Singapore across all industry sectors.

This year, the new award for enterprise transformation seeks out the firm best able to adopt a business model to achieve productivity gains, sustainable growth and the ability to move into higher value-added activities. Other criteria for the award include collaboration with institutes of higher learning or other research institutions on research or innovation projects, as well as other initiatives that result in positive change in the competitiveness of the firm.

Only companies that made it to the E50 list will be considered for this special award.

BT editor Wong Wei Kong said: "We hope that this new award, in highlighting the best examples of companies that have truly transformed their businesses, will help to spur others to do the same."

Mr Jonathan Ho, head of enterprise at KPMG Singapore, noted that more companies are putting in efforts to adapt to the changing business environment in more diverse ways, such as investing in technologies that digitalise their business operations or taking advantage of market opportunities presented through collaborations with larger organisations.

Aside from the Enterprise Transformation Award, there will be the Internationalisation Award, which seeks to encourage more local enterprises to expand overseas. In addition, companies that have been on the E50 list for five years are accorded the Five-Year Award.

The nominations for the 2018 E50 Awards close on June 30. The 2018 E50 list will be published in the fourth quarter of this year in conjunction with an awards gala dinner.