To function smoothly and be successful, I believe that seed companies require an unusually high level of constant communication amongst all employees. More than once, seed companies have gotten into serious difficulties because at some point the channels of communication have been broken, so that decisions we made without feedback from all participants, and this has lead to catastrophic situations, sometimes even to the company going under altogether.

In this business, it is essential to maintain at all times an exceptional level of communication among all employees within a company. The way we try to achieve this at Limagrain is by keeping our individual companies at a reasonable size which makes it possible for such smooth communication to take place unimpeded. I am convinced that this is one of the key to success.

We are trying not to be too dogmatic about it and to remain as pragmatic as possible in the way our companies operate, and we recognize that communcation is naturally important in most other sectors, but it remains that, in a seed company, every decision that is made by an individual employee at a certain level of the chain of command a a significant impact on all other employees up and downstream of the chain of command. More often than not, business failures can be traced to a breakdown in this chain of communication.