Increased talent attraction for the seafood industry through national project in high schools
During 2022, NCE Seafood, in collaboration with Ungt Entreprenørskap Norge, will organize 9 innovation camps in different regions of Norway. Through the new collaboration agreement, a total of 900 high school students will have the opportunity to build expertise in sustainability, innovation, entrepreneurship and seafood.
"At NCE Seafood, we have a goal to increase awareness and attractiveness of the seafood industry for young people. Through the Innovation Camps with Young Entrepreneurship, students will focus on creativity, creative joy and innovation in addition to collaborating with local seafood companies. This will help make the seafood industry interesting and familiar to the workers of the future," says Nina Stangeland, CEO of NCE Seafood.
Young Entrepreneurship is a non-profit organization that works with innovation and entrepreneurship in schools. The organization works throughout the country and throughout the school year, and the work takes place in close collaboration with local businesses.
"Young Entrepreneurship is a bridge builder between school and work, and our goal is to give new generations a taste of and the competence to contribute to the future of work. If we are to achieve this, we are dependent on getting the business community on board, and as the country's largest growth industry, the seafood industry is in a special position. We are therefore very pleased to have NCE Seafood on board, and we look forward to inviting high school students to participate in real challenges around sustainable growth for the industry," says Grete Ingeborg Nykkelmo, CEO of Young Entrepreneurship Norway.
Good experiences with Innovation Camp at all levels
Together with Ungt Entreprenørskap, NCE Seafood organized several innovation camps in 2021, at primary, secondary and upper secondary schools in Vestland County. The camps have proven to be a success, and the project has provided great value both for the students and for the seafood industry.
Cluster members such as Lerøy Seafood and Bolaks have participated with case studies and current challenges related to the industry, and the students have impressed greatly with their creativity and solution-oriented attitude.
"I am impressed by how the students manage to think outside the box, and how committed they are to finding solutions that will provide sustainable growth in the industry. There is no doubt that they have learned a lot about the seafood industry," says Karina Antonsen Hjelle, Vice President of Bolaks.
Lerøy Seafood is working on a number of concepts to make seafood available to young people, and as part of the innovation camp they therefore chose to challenge the students on how to get young people to eat more seafood?
"We want young people to eat more seafood, but we haven't completely "cracked the code" on why young people omit seafood from their daily diet. Therefore, we want to give young people the problem so that they can research and give us good solutions that we can use," says Pål Erik Michelsen, Head of Brands and Digital Marketing, Lerøy Seafood.
Scaling up the collaboration to engage more young people
In 2022, the project will be expanded to four different regions; Vestland County Municipality, Rogaland County Municipality, Møre og Romsdal County Municipality and Trøndelag County Municipality and the plan is to increase the number of Innovation Camps in 2023.
NCE Seafood works for sustainable growth and development in the seafood industry. One of the most important focus areas to achieve this is competence and future talent development. This will therefore be a very important project for the seafood industry and will, in addition to Lerøy Seafood and Bolaks, involve all NCE Seafood partners and members across the country. Together with partners and members such as Coast, Grieg Seafood, Cargill Aqua Nutrition, Benchmark Genetics, MSD, Pharmaq and Patogen, we will prepare relevant cases in addition to a general introduction to the seafood industry.
About Innovation Camp
Creativity, creative joy and innovation are the core of an innovation camp.
In the program, students are given a real assignment by NCE Seafood with a defined problem to which they must present a solution, within a limited period of time. In advance, NCE Seafood provides students with the background information they need to solve the challenge and offers and guidance throughout the process to increase the students' learning outcomes. Students work on the assignment in groups and present their solutions to a jury, which selects a winner based on given criteria.
Innovation camps are often used in the start-up phase of a student business, youth business or student enterprise.
