GastroTech Days: Language as a platform for innovation, lessons from elBulli

Language as a platform
for innovation
Some lessons from elBulli
M. Pilar Opazo
Dept of Sociology Columbia University NYC
Ramon Sangüesa
Technical University of Catalonia

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

A recipe for hybrid
research


Work in progress
• A study on the organizational evolution of elBulli
and its sustained creativity and innovation

• How and why practices started at elBulli have
spread across time and social space, within the
gastronomic ﬁeld and in other ﬁelds

• How elBulli’s practices are transmitted to elBulli
Foundation, specially given its interest in knowledge-
sharing and diffusion.

• To understand the present and the future we need
to start by looking at the past.


Dimensions of the study
• Which aspects of the past of
elBulli will remain in the
present and help us think
about the future of elBulli
Foundation?

• Organizational narratives
- Self-perception
- Perception of outsiders

• Organizational trajectory
• Diffusion
- From outlier to reference

Work so far
In-depth interviews
Field trips
Analysis of Secondary sources


Importance of language

“Cuisine… is as well panoply
of narratives that sustain
praxis. Cuisine constructs and
upholds a community of
discourse, a collectivity
held together by words,
by language, by
interpretations of the world in
which we live”.

( P. Ferguson, "Accounting for Taste", 2004:8)


From Food for Thought
to Thought for Food

(Ferguson 2004)

Example: objectivation


elBulli’s language

• Products or ingredients

• Technology (equipments and
utensils)
Recipes
• Preparations (concepts and
Combinatorics and
techniques)
Heuristics
• Styles and characteristics

("A day at elBulli" 2010)


Language as a
technology

“Culinary “We create words, with those
Creativity” words we create sentences and
with those sentences we create
paragraphs….the more words we
have, the more unique our
language will be.”

(Ferran Adria March 2011,NYC)


Language as a
technology

A codiﬁed language offers a
platform to create, that is
collectively shared

Make sense of the world and
coordinate….deﬁnes the
playground

Not only use language to
create but expand and
transform this language


How can we trace the importance and
use of elBulli’s language?
• Measurable innovation results
• Number of recipes
• Number of techniques
• Number of new concepts

• Identify its adoption by the culinary ﬁeld
• Timeline of adoption
• References

• Spillovers into other ﬁelds

Ethnographic
approach
How was language adopted and
used?
How does it expands?

Examine the use of elBulli’s language in
practice:
Chefs
Collaborators
Competitors
Schools of cuisine
Scientiﬁc Groups


Media Analysis

• Books
• Articles
• Extraction of words
• Correlation with internal language
• When do tipping points happen

Web Analysis

• Seeding the words
• Crawling
• Relating to communities


Community
detection and
analysis
Structural folds
Where do the most innovative
(not just “connected”) members
of the relevant ommunities
around the elBulli Foundation?

Qualitative analysis
(ethnographic approach)

Organization
Archival Text
Mining Quantitativ
e
Historical Discourse Approach
ethnography Analysis
Network
Qualitative exploration
Approach
Innovator’s
In-depth
identiﬁcation
interviews
Environment

Hybrid approach

Open research questions
?
• ?
How can we can find ways of extrapolating
elBulli knowledge to other organizations,
within the gastronomic field and in other
fields?

?
Internet

• How is the new environment of elBulli
Foundation articulated? Which kinds of
diffusion strategies could be more effective?
Media
• Which aspects of the past of elBulli that will
Universit
ies
remain in the present and help us to think Culinary
about the future of elBulli Foundation? Experts

Alicia
• How to understand better the connection
between different types of methods and Restaur
technologies for this type of research? General
Public


Final remarks

• The measure of an organization’s
innovative potential relies on its
capacity to deﬁne and develop a
solid platform to innovate.

• What matters most is the quality
of the “words” and “sentences”, “ElBulli una historia de un
created and the opportunities of sueño” Audiovisual
Catalogue
crossovers that they may open


References
• Abend, Lisa. 2011. "The sorcerer's apprentices: a season in the kitchen of Ferran Adria’s
elBulli." New York: Free Press.

• Bourdieu, Pierre. 1979. “Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste”. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.

• Czarniawska, Barbara. (1997). “The Narrative of Cultural Studies.” In Narrating the
Organization: Dramas of Institutional Identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

• Ferguson, Priscilla. 2004. “Accounting for Taste: The Triumph of French Cuisine.” Chicago:
Chicago University Press.

• Stark, David. (2009). The sense of dissonance: Accounts of worth in economic life. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.

• Svejenova, Silviya; Mazza, Carmelo and Planellas, Marc El. 2007. “Cooking up Change in Haute
Cuisine: Ferran Adria As an Institutional Entrepreneur”.

• Vedres, Balazs and Stark, David. 2010. “Structural Folds: Generative Disruption in
Overlapping Groups,” American Journal of Sociology 15/4: 1150-90.

• Yon-Yeo, Ahn, Sebastian Ahnert, James P. Bagrow and Barabasi, Albert-Lazslo. 2011. http://
meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR11/Event/144486

• ElBulli Publications

Thanks!

M. Pilar Opazo
mpo2110@columbia.edu

Ramon Sangüesa
sanguesa@lsi.upc.edu


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