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Appetite for Innovation

Creativity and Change at elBulli

M. Pilar Opazo

$61.95

Hardback

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English
Columbia University Press
05 July 2016
The name elBulli 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 elBulli's business model proved unsustainable. The restaurant converted to a foundation in 2011, and is working hard on its next revolution. Will elBulli continue to innovate? What must an organization do to create something new?

Appetite for Innovation is an organizational analysis of elBulli and the nature of innovation. Pilar Opazo joined elBulli'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 elBulli 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 elBulli are similar to those required for innovation in art, music, business, and technology, proving the value of the elBulli model across organizations and industries.
By:  
Imprint:   Columbia University Press
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 229mm,  Width: 152mm,  Spine: 28mm
Weight:   581g
ISBN:   9780231176781
ISBN 10:   0231176783
Pages:   336
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  Professional and scholarly ,  ELT Advanced ,  Further / Higher Education
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active

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.

Reviews for Appetite for Innovation: Creativity and Change at elBulli

Appetite for Innovation offers a backstage view of one of the world's most interesting restaurants, its remarkable laboratory, and the foundation that was created after Ferran Adria made the unusual decision to close his hugely successful restaurant. M. Pilar Opazo was afforded unusually close access, and her insider account is rich and intriguing. The processual view of innovation is useful, as it highlights the many elements that are needed to be galvanized in support of an expansive vision. -- Walter W. Powell, Stanford University Appetite for Innovation is a careful and thoughtful study of elBulli, the restaurant on the Costa Brava that developed and popularized what has been called 'molecular gastronomy' or 'modernist cuisine.' The tendency when discussing the success of elBulli has been simply to proclaim the genius of chef Ferran Adri , but M. Pilar Opazo shows that genius is not enough. To have an impact beyond a narrow coterie requires a disciplined and organized inventory of accomplishments and the ability to win over adherents. She thus reveals the infrastructure of success and the paradoxical relationship between willingness to destroy previous accomplishments and practices in order to push forward an unstable creativity. -- Paul Freedman, professor of history, Yale University


  • Commended for PROSE Award in Business, Finance, and Management 2017

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