Global Top Agile CEO Awards honor 14 leaders in Taipei

The fourth annual Global Top Agile CEO Awards recognized 14 business leaders in Taipei on Aug. 17, alongside the first Enterprise Agile Talent Development Award. The event spotlighted how senior executives are pushing agile beyond IT and into corporate decision-making, talent development and business strategy.

Why it matters: - The awards highlight a shift in how companies use agile, moving it from software teams into executive leadership, corporate strategy and workforce development. - The new Enterprise Agile Talent Development Award signals a broader focus on whether organizations are building agile skills at scale, not just adopting agile practices at the top. - The ceremony brought together more than 200 corporate executives and agile practitioners, underscoring growing interest in agile leadership across industries.

What happened: - The fourth annual Global Top Agile CEO Awards honored 14 winners at the National Taiwan University Hospital International Convention Center in Taipei. - Roger Chou, a board director of the Scrum Alliance, presented the awards. - The winners were selected from 26 submitted stories covering leadership and agile adoption across manufacturing, construction, consumer services, healthcare and biotech, digital technology, and education. - The event was held alongside RSG Taipei 2026, the Scrum Alliance’s officially licensed flagship event in Taiwan. - RSG Taipei 2026 expanded its focus from engineering teams to CEOs and senior decision-makers for the first time.

The details: - The Global Top Agile CEO Award was founded in 2023 by Dr. Roger Chou, Taiwan’s first International Agile Ambassador. - The award is described as the only agile award in the world aimed specifically at CEOs and senior executives. - A panel of 10 international judges evaluated this year’s winners using three criteria: project impact, depth of agile adoption and organizational influence. - Chou said agile is an action-oriented mindset and framework for navigating fast, unpredictable change, using short iterative cycles to surface problems early and adjust course. - Chou cited global organizations including Google, Meta, Amazon, Netflix, GE, Spotify and Tesla, along with Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom, Galaxy Software Services Corporation and Cathay United Bank, as companies that have embraced the approach. - First place went to Wei-Chuan Su, chairman of Nan I Book Enterprise Co., Ltd. (Nan I Education Group), who led the company’s shift from a family publishing business toward digital education, culminating in the 2025 formation of Nan I Education Group. - Second place went to Chun-Chien Yu, general manager of the Productivity Innovation Business Group at Galaxy Software Services Corporation, for more than four decades in software and for integrating human resources, knowledge management and financial services product lines while driving major-account growth and business-model innovation. - Third place went to Chen-Yuan Lo, chairman of Mason Capital Inc., for bringing agile thinking into investment banking through an “agile venture-building” model that helps companies connect with international capital markets such as Nasdaq and the Singapore Exchange. - The other 11 award recipients were Hsien-Tung Wang of EKC Energy and Environmental Control Co., Ltd.; Shih-Fan Lee of Der Yiing Plastic Co., Ltd.; Chun Chiang of Lee-Shinn Construction Group; Ling-Ching Wang of Dr. Wang GTH Co., Ltd.; Fang-Ming Wu of Taipei Agricultural Products Marketing Corporation; Te-Chang Weng of Pfizer Taiwan Ltd.; Henry Hu of Auriga Security, Inc.; Chen-Yu Hao of GeoSense Technology Co., Ltd.; Mei-Feng Chen of AllTech Information System Co., Ltd.; Hsing-Chung Chen of Asia University; and I-Ming Liao of National University of Kaohsiung. - The Enterprise Agile Talent Development Award was based primarily on the number of Scrum Alliance-certified Certified ScrumMaster and Certified Scrum Product Owner professionals each organization has developed. - The organizers said the talent award is not meant to rank companies against one another, but to surface agile talent-development achievements that have largely gone unrecorded. - Most winning organizations were represented in person by general managers, chairpersons or other senior executives.

Between the lines: - The awards reflect a growing argument that agile is no longer just a delivery method, but a management approach that can shape how boards and senior leaders make decisions. - The talent-development award suggests organizers see workforce capability as the clearest early signal of whether agile adoption will spread across an enterprise. - Chou framed the issue as one of leadership survival in an AI era, saying real agility must reach every industry and help keep corporate decision-making from being displaced by AI.

What's next: - The awards are likely to continue tracking both executive-level agile adoption and the development of agile talent inside organizations. - Organizers appear positioned to expand visibility for companies building large pools of Scrum-certified professionals as enterprise agile adoption matures. - The RSG Taipei platform may keep serving as a venue where agile leaders, executives and practitioners compare how the discipline is being applied beyond engineering teams.

The bottom line: - This year’s Taipei event made one point clear: agile is being recast as a boardroom issue, not just an IT practice.