I've been awarded APAC CEO of the Year twice and featured among the 10 Elite CEOs in Asia. So I have some credibility to write this honestly.
Most awards in the business world are a mix of genuine recognition and PR machinery. Both can be valuable; neither is what most people think they are.
What awards actually do
Provide a credibility shorthand. If you're trying to sell to a corporate buyer, partner with a bigger company, or raise capital from a serious investor, "APAC CEO of the Year" is a cheap pattern-match for "this person is taken seriously by other people." It doesn't prove competence. It signals that someone, somewhere, vetted you and decided you were worth highlighting.
Open doors to other founders. The single most valuable thing about awards is the network of fellow recipients. The actual award is forgotten in a year; the relationships compound.
Provide a forcing function for your own narrative. Applying for an award forces you to articulate, in writing, what you've built and why it matters. That document is useful even if you don't win.
What they don't do
Build customers. Almost no customer ever bought from us because of an award. The decision had been made on product, price, or relationship — the award was at most a small reassurance afterwards.
Validate strategy. Awards reward visibility, not necessarily soundness. Plenty of award-winning businesses fail. Plenty of quietly excellent businesses never win anything.
Substitute for results. If your business is struggling and you're winning awards, the awards aren't the lifeline. They're the distraction.
How I think about them now
Apply for awards that matter to your audience. Politely decline ones that look like vanity machines. Use the application process as a forcing function for clarity. Use the recognition as a credibility tool when relevant. Forget about them otherwise.
The best founders I know with the most awards barely talk about them. The worst founders I know with the most awards talk about little else. That gap tells you something about what awards actually mean.