Attendance at the American Seed Trade Association’s CSS 2014 & Seed Expo is expected to set a new record this year in Chicago.
Today, Bill Whitacre, president and CEO of J.R. Simplot Company, talked about the importance of innovation to the industry.
“The opportunity that we see at the Simplot company in a single word is innovation, or intellectual curiosity,” Whitacre says, referring to the notion that there’s got to be a better way. “It’s important to give our employees and customers the opportunity to have those types of discussions, and it’s very freeing and very effective.”
One thing that Whitacre notes is a different philosophy than most is the company’s emphasis on employees. “We spend a lot of time getting it right with our employees,” Whitacre says. “Everybody always says that your customer is your No. 1 concern, but we say it’s our employees. We need our employees signed up ever single day to support what we do with our customers — first our employees, second our customers and third our communities.”
We’ll continue to provide more information throughout the rest of the conference at SeedWorld.com.
