About the Ajinomoto Group
The World the Ajinomoto Group Seeks to Achieve
Fulfilling the Ajinomoto Group’s Purpose of “contributing to the well-being of all human beings, our society, and our planet with ‘AminoScience’” requires that we co-create social value and economic value through our business. Our belief is that we can contribute to a richer future for all human beings, our society, and our planet by repeating the cycle of honing our ability to empathize, accomplishing “well-being” from the consumer’s perspective, and giving back to society the values we co-create through our business.
To achieve these goals, it is important that each and every employee personally take our Purpose as their own, and it’s essential that we have a corporate culture that is driven by empathy with our stakeholders and is continually striving to realize our vision. The Ajinomoto Group will strive to further accelerate and scale up the co-creation of social and economic value, going beyond solving food and health issues to contribute to the well-being of all human beings, our society and our planet with “AminoScience.”
The History of our Founding
Everything began with a bold idea: to improve nutrition through science. In 1908, Dr. Kikunae Ikeda discovered umami substance, and soon after, AJI‑NO‑MOTO®, the pure umami seasoning, brought that discovery to the world. Today, over a century later, we’re still driven by that same spirit of using “AminoScience” to “Eat Well, Live Well.” and realizing our Purpose: to contribute to the well-being of all human beings, our society and our planet with “AminoScience.”
Our Philosophy
At the heart of the Ajinomoto Group lies our founding promise: “Eat Well, Live Well.”
This slogan simply embodies Our Philosophy, which is built on three layers: AGW (Ajinomoto Group Way), ASV (Ajinomoto Group Creating Shared Value) and our Purpose.
At the foundation is AGW, representing our four core values: Create new value, Pioneer spirit, Social contribution, and Value people.
Building on these values, we co-create social and economic value through our business activities – this is what we call ASV.
The social value we generate through ASV is clearly expressed in our Purpose: “Contributing to the well-being of all human beings, our society and our planet with ‘AminoScience’.”
True to this philosophy, we continuously invest in our four intangible assets — human, technology, customer, and organization assets. We believe that nurturing these assets is the key to creating long-term value.
Changing the World with the Power of
“AminoScience”
“AminoScience” is a collective term for the various materials, functions, technologies, and services derived from the research and implementation processes that rigorously focus on unlocking the power of amino acids. Furthermore, it also denotes the Ajinomoto Group’s unique scientific approach to connecting these functions to the resolving of social issues and contributing to wellbeing. “AminoScience” is one of the sources of the Ajinomoto Group’s competitive advantage not easily imitated by other companies.
Realizing Our Outcomes
In the Ajinomoto Group, each employee is dedicated to achieving two outcomes which are connected by agrifood systems: reducing our environmental impact by 50% and helping to extend the healthy life expectancy of 1 billion people.
Co-creating value in four focused growth areas
with “AminoScience”
The Ajinomoto Group has achieved growth for over 100 years by diversifying its business and expanding globally through innovation driven by “AminoScience.” In order to achieve the dramatic growth targeted by its purpose-driven management by medium-term ASV initiatives, we set four focused growth areas - Healthcare, Food & Wellness, ICT, and Green - as our basic policy, leveraging “AminoScience” and focusing on areas with high market-growth potential and high social value that the Ajinomoto Group can create. In setting these goals, we backcasted from where we want to be in 2030 and created a roadmap to achieve them. First, we drew a PoF (Picture of the Future) of what human beings, society, and the planet will look like with the participation of future generations of employees and key managerial positions who will play a central role in the company. We then organized the social value that we will be able to create with “AminoScience” in the future.
The four focused growth areas are areas where we can solve social issues, create value through business operations unique to the Ajinomoto Group that contributes well-being, increase our corporate value through ASV (Ajinomoto Group Creating Shared Value), and realize our “Purpose.” We will evolve our business portfolio by steadily promoting the creation of new businesses and organic growth through business model transformation in these four focused growth areas, both by forecasting from existing businesses and backcasting from our vision.
The Intangible Assets That Power ASV
The Ajinomoto Group believes that in order to achieve the challenging ASV indicators set in the 2030 Roadmap, it is necessary to further accumulate and grow four intangible assets: human assets, technology assets, customer assets, and organization assets. In particular, we are strengthening our efforts in human assets that connect technology assets and customer assets to generate innovation.
Each of our diverse employees, who share the Ajinomoto Group’s Purpose, grows through the challenges that push them beyond their comfort zones, and their honed capabilities become the driving force that advance our strategies for achieving the Roadmap.
Refined individual capabilities promote diversity from the perspective of knowledge, experience, and attributes and will create innovation as a team through fostering a culture of mutual respect and advanced management.
We believe that the foundation of this series of processes is the “Well-being” of our employees. We pursue initiatives globally based on the concept of linking the four pillars of Connecting Strategy: Purpose, Challenge, Diversity (DE&I) and Well-being (human resources investment).
ASV Initiatives
ASV (Ajinomoto Group Creating Shared Value) is our way of turning aspiration into action: by addressing social issues through our business we create value for society and economic returns at the same time. ASV links our Purpose to everyday work and gives everyone a role in shaping a better future.
By embedding the ASV management cycle—understanding and sense-making, empathy and resonance, execution and realization process, and monitoring and improvement—into our culture, we’re fostering a shared mindset that drives continuous, purpose-driven growth.
This isn’t just a framework on paper, it’s visible in the passion of our people. From developing healthy foods to supporting lifesaving medicines or finding new ways to cut waste, employees everywhere describe ASV as the reason their work matters. This shared commitment ensures that as the Ajinomoto Group grows, the benefits are felt far beyond our walls.
