Ghana’s largest state power generation company, Volta River Authority (VRA) has celebrated the Creativity and Innovation Day instituted in the company and awarded some staff who generated creative ideas for the sustainability of the company’s operations in the face of energy transition.
The Creativity and Innovation Day was instituted in VRA in April 2022 by the CEO, Ing Emmanuel Antwi-Darkwa, as part of the Authority’s anniversary celebrations.
It began with the setting up of a 14-member Creative and Innovation Committee.
Giving an overview of the activities that had taken place since the inauguration of the Committee on April 26, 2022, Dr. Stella Agyenim Boateng, an Advisor to the CEO of VRA, said the Committee organised road shows at all VRA work locations to create awareness, carry out sensitisation exercises and educated staff on the need to embrace creativity and innovation as a culture, build the capacity of the Committee members, held webinars on topics such as creativity and innovation, future of artificial intelligence in business; building resilient cyber security environment, created a link to solicit innovative ideas from staff and held departmental day exhibition of ideas and concluded it with a panel discussion on creativity and innovation.
She explained that 67 ideas were received and ranked and ten top ideas were recognised with various awards.
Denni Anyomi was crowned the overall winner and received a plaque. He would also be sponsored to travel to Dubai for some days.
The 2nd and 3rd winners also received plaques and would travel to Rwanda and Benin to understudy for a few days.
The rest received plaques and cash to appreciate their innovative and creative ideas.
Delivering a speech, the Chief Executive Officer of VRA, Mr. Emmanuel Antwi-Darkwa noted that the goal of growing the Authority is dependent on the symbiotic relationship between their sustainability plan, overarching corporate strategy and creativity and innovation.
He said it is for these reasons that the Authority, last year, initiated ‘Creativity and Innovation Day’ as part of its anniversary celebrations.
He said the need for creative thinking has become pertinent looking at the current state of the energy industry.
“It is very clear that the old ways and conventional methods of working or managing organisations are no longer effective. What we need is fresh and unique ideas that provide novel approaches and solutions to the way we carry out our business,” he said.
He noted that there is a paradigm shift in the energy industry, stating that renewable energy sources are displacing conventional energy sources.
“We must keep creativity and innovation at the forefront of our business to build new markets and increase competitiveness. We must develop new partnerships and relationships, cut down the turnaround time and increase profitability as every private sector institution does,” he urged the staff.
The Board Chairman of VRA, Mr Kofi Tutu Agyare charged the management to ensure that creative and innovative ideas received from the staff are implemented.
Source: https://energynewsafrica.com