How to Stay Relevant as a Seafood Pioneer

The opportunity

Pioneering lies in the DNA of Lerøy Seafood, the world-leading seafood corporation with a history dating back to 1899. They have consistently been at the forefront of innovative solutions making seafood accessible to a broad range of consumers in a safe and valuable way.

The word “pioneer” not only nods to their history as a company daring and willing to push for change, but it also creates expectations for what’s to be created and innovated in Lerøy for decades to come.

Although innovation has always played a key part in Lerøy’s success, they still recognized the need for a more structured approach in this work. More specifically, they needed a common language, unified methodology and increased capacity to work with strategic innovation.

ÆRA was hired to help set up a brand-new innovation unit within the corporation, as well as an annual innovation class that will ensure that the broader organization is involved in the development of an innovation mindset, methodology and structure for capturing new ideas.

Learning by doing

The work to establish an innovation unit in Lerøy began with a substantial amount of sparring with key stakeholders, in order to lay a strategic foundation for its reason to exist.

This was followed by discussions around specific goals, methods and tools, mapping out the responsibility of the innovation unit itself, as well as the involvement of and expectations to the yearly participants of the innovation class.

To ensure that future-driven development spans Lerøy as a group, and not just designated to the innovation unit, the innovation class was set up as an iterative innovation process centered around “learning by doing”. It is an approach developed where participants explore new insights, future scenarios, hypotheses and ideas to provide Lerøy competitive advantage in a changing world.

The result

This project is an ongoing partnership, in which the main goal is to transfer the competencies within ÆRA to both the brewing innovation unit in Lerøy and the organization overall, enabling the corporation’s future, sustainable success. Most results will thus be visible over time.

With expected results such as an increased ability to achieve sustainability goals and a stronger internal innovation culture comes a more defined position for Lerøy in the global seafood market.

What we provided

• Strategy for sustainable growth
• Organizational design
• Change agents and advisors
• Learning by doing
• Leader group program

Video and photos by Lerøy ©