Uncertainty on the menu

strategy+business, October 16, 2020

by Theodore Kinni




Photograph by Yagi Studio


If you’re a foodie, the research that Vaughn Tan undertook to write The Uncertainty Mindset will strike you as a dream gig. The assistant professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at University College London’s School of Management spent much of the past decade studying — and embedded within — the culinary R&D teams associated with a handful of the world’s top purveyors of high-end cuisine, including José Andrés’s ThinkFoodGroup, Nathan Myhrvold’s Modernist Cuisine, Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck, René Redzepi’s Noma, and “Amaja” (a pseudonym Tan uses for a restaurant that sounds a lot like Poul Andrias Ziska’s Koks). Aside from the good eats, Tan came away from his research with unconventional ideas for structuring and stimulating innovation teams.

The innovation challenge facing these rarefied culinary organizations is daunting; the customer expectations of an Apple or a Tesla pale by comparison. Imagine trying to satisfy a discerning gourmand who has waited a year for a reservation and then traveled from Singapore to the Faroe Islands solely for an 18-course meal. It is expected to be one of the best meals in the world. Each course features unusual ingredients prepared in unique ways that not only engage the senses but also impart the identity of the chef and the restaurant, so much so that it couldn’t have come from any other kitchen. Tan calls this elusive quality familiar novelty. “Novelty combined with distinctive familiarity makes for loyal customers — and is nearly impossible to copy,” he writes.

Outside London, at The Fat Duck Experimental Kitchen (FDEK), Tan observes pastry chef Isabel Rodriguez as she creates a dessert that will anchor an entirely new menu. “The team had decided that it would have to convey the feeling, as Rodriguez said, of being ‘dreamy, comforting, surreal. Like how you feel when you are about to fall asleep when you’re small. You’ve been bathed, and you’re feeling clean and tired, and everything smells like baby powder,’” writes Tan. Before the work is done, the dish, which the team calls Counting Sheep, will evolve into two dishes served in quick succession. Among its many fine details is the design and fabrication of a spoon with a fuzzy handle that will be dusted lightly with, yes, baby powder.

At Amaja, the R&D team spends three months figuring out how to cook 200-year-old mahogany clams — an ingredient never before used in high cuisine. In ThinkFoodGroup’s first Las Vegas venture, the company takes on the high-pressure work of launching three restaurants — serving tapas, Chinese–Mexican food, and a tasting menu — on the opening night of a newly constructed gaming resort.

In observing how culinary R&D team members work individually and together on such projects, Tan uncovers six “innovation insights” that serve as the core findings of his book. Two of the insights are particularly intriguing. Read the rest here.

What Elite Donors Want

Insights by Stanford Business, October 14, 2020

by Theodore Kinni

REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

In November 2012, newly elected Democratic members of the United States Congress got about a week to savor their victories. Then, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee advised them to start hitting the phones for 3-4 hours per day. Who were they supposed to be calling? Mainly, elite donors — the fewer than 1% of Americans who give candidates more than $200 in any given election cycle.

It isn’t news that politicians court elite donors or that elite donors have greater political access and influence than the typical voter. But, as Stanford Graduate School of Business political economist Neil Malhotra points out in an article recently published in Public Opinion Quarterly, “we know remarkably little about what they actually want from government.”

This is a particularly relevant issue during the current, seemingly endless, election cycle, in which the battle for control of the executive and legislative branches of the federal government is unusually contentious and fraught with implications for the future of the nation.

Malhotra and his coauthor David Broockman, a former Stanford GSB professor who recently moved to the University of California, Berkeley, based their findings on a survey they conducted of 1,152 elite donors, who collectively contributed more than $17.2 million to election campaigns since 2008. That survey was performed for an earlier study aimed at understanding the political anatomy of tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, whom they labeled “liberaltarians.” Read the rest here.