Over the course of 40 years of leadership, many decisions have been made. Jørgen Læssøe has certainly made fewer than the average leader would have made during that time because he has delegated responsibility and decision-making authority, but nevertheless, it is his choices that have defined the most important milestones in JLI's history.
One of the defining decisions was made in 2016, when he took the initiative to pass on the "power" and sold 51% of the company to Jan Dall Christensen. In doing so, he set in motion changes that, in less than a decade, have tripled the company's revenue and its employee count.
He made his most recent defining decision in 2023, when he chose to sell the majority of his shares to JLI's employees.
"Since I have no heirs myself, I have always hoped that the employees would somehow take over the company and carry it forward. After all, they are the ones who have built the company and made it what it is today," says Jørgen Læssøe.
Belief in the future
The idea of buying in and becoming co-owners received strong support from employees. 33 out of 36 chose to buy shares. One of them was vision engineer Jan Damsgaard:
"I chose to invest because JLI vision is a growing company in an exciting market – both professionally and financially – and I want to show my commitment and be part of it. I think the fact that so many of us have chosen to buy shares shows that there is a belief that JLI will be a good place to work for many years to come, and the fact that we are now co-owners can only make us even more motivated to participate in both development and operations," he says.
The JLI vision Foundation
With the foundation for JLI's continuation firmly in place, Jørgen Læssøe has been able to turn his attention to a new way of ensuring that an important part of the JLI spirit lives on. The passion for solving difficult tasks, innovating, and finding new ways, both in terms of computer vision and business practices.
That is why, in 2025, he established a non-profit foundation whose purpose, according to its charter, is to support research and development in vision technology and research into self-managing companies.
The devil is in the details, as they say, and in this case the name of the foundation tells a story about Jørgen Læssøe and his leadership. The type of foundations that successful entrepreneurs leave behind tend to be named after their founders, thus becoming a monument to their life's work. But not in this case. The foundation is not called the Jørgen Læssøe Foundation, but rather the JLI vision Foundation. The company comes first.
The foundation will distribute its first million Danish kroner in 2025 to two projects, each of which will pave the way for new knowledge, and the foundation's board will consider new projects each year.
In this way, Jørgen Læssøe will donate his fortune back to the field he has been passionate about for more than 40 years and continue to push the boundaries of vision technology and the way business is done.
