The name el Bulli is synonymous with creativity and innovation. Located in Catalonia, Spain, the three-star Michelin restaurant led the world to ‘molecular’ or ‘techno-emotional’ cooking and made creations, such as pine-nut marshmallows, rose-scented mozzarella, liquid olives, and melon caviar, into sensational reality. People traveled from all over the world—if they could secure a reservation during its six months of operation—to experience the wonder that chef Ferran Adrià and his team concocted in their test kitchen, never offering the same dish twice. Yet el Bulli’s business model proved unsustainable. The restaurant converted to a foundation in 2011, and is working hard on its next revolution. Will el Bulli continue to innovate? What must an organization do to create something new?
Appetite for Innovation is an organizational analysis of el Bulli and the nature of innovation. Pilar Opazo joined el Bulli’s inner circle as the restaurant transitioned from a for-profit business to its new organizational model. In this book, she compares this moment to the culture of change that first made el Bulli famous, and then describes the novel forms of communication, idea mobilization, and embeddedness that continue to encourage the staff to focus and invent as a whole. She finds that the successful strategies employed by el Bulli are similar to those required for innovation in art, music, business, and technology, proving the value of the el Bulli model across organizations and industries.
Содержание
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Context and Vision
2. From Chaos to Order: El Bulli’s System of Continuous Innovation
3. Diffusion and Institutionalization of Innovation
4. The Bittersweet Taste of Relentless Innovation
5. Cooking Up a New Organization
Conclusion
Notes
References
Appendix
Index
Об авторе
M. Pilar Opazo is a postdoctoral research scholar at Columbia Business School. She is the coauthor of two Spanish-language volumes,
Communications of Organizations and Negotiation: Competing or Collaborating, and her work has been published in
Sociological Theory and the
International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science.