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.
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