The Uncertainty Mindset: Innovation Insights from the Frontiers of Food

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Columbia University Press, Jul 28, 2020 - Social Science - 287 pages
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Innovation is how businesses stay ahead of the competition and adapt to market conditions that change in unpredictable and uncertain ways. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, high-end cuisine underwent a profound transformation. Once an industry that prioritized consistency and reliability, it turned into one where constant change was a competitive necessity. A top restaurant’s reputation and success have become so closely bound up with its ability to innovate that a new organizational form, the culinary research and development team, has emerged. The best of these R&D teams continually expand the frontiers of food—they invent a constant stream of new dishes, new cooking processes and methods, and even new ways of experiencing food. How do they achieve this nonstop novelty? And what can culinary research and development teach us about how organizations innovate?

Vaughn Tan opens up the black box of elite culinary R&D to provide essential insights. Drawing on years of unprecedented access to the best and most influential culinary R&D teams in the world, he reveals how they exemplify what he calls the uncertainty mindset. Such a mindset intentionally incorporates uncertainty into organization design rather than simply trying to reduce risk. It changes how organizations hire, set goals, and motivate team members and leads organizations to work in highly unconventional ways. A revelatory look at the R&D kitchen, The Uncertainty Mindset upends conventional wisdom about how to organize for innovation and offers practical insights for businesses trying to become innovative and adaptable.

 

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Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
The Undercurrents of the
WellKnown Barely Understood
Four Types of New Ideas in Food
A Nondelusional Worldview
The Uncertainty Mindset
The Power of Familiar Novelty
Learning House Style
The Motivation Paradox
Desperation by Design
All Change
A Mindset for an Uncertain World
Notes
Copyright

Other editions - View all

The Uncertainty Mindset - Innovation Insights from the Frontiers of Food
Vaughn Tan
No preview available - 2020
The Uncertainty Mindset - Innovation Insights from the Frontiers of Food
Vaughn Tan
No preview available - 2020

Common terms and phrases

ability able adapt allowed Amaja approach became become began bread building called challenge chefs combination complex components consistent context continually conventional cooking Cooking Lab create critics culinary culinary innovation culinary R&D cutting-edge desperation difficult dishes distinctive early effective emerged entire existing experience familiar Fat Duck feel figure flavor Garcia goals growing guests head high-end cuisine idea important individual industry ingredients innovation kitchen knowledge learning liquid look menu methods Modernist Cuisine motivate moved needed Noma open-ended style operating organizational organizations possible practice problem projects prototype push quickly R&D teams recipes requires responsibilities restaurant result Review roles Science seemed social station structure success tasting team members texture things ThinkFoodTank thinking thought told trying uncertain uncertainty uncertainty mindset understanding

About the author (2020)

Vaughn Tan is an assistant professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at University College London’s School of Management. He previously worked for Google in California.

Bibliographic information

QR code for The Uncertainty Mindset
TitleThe Uncertainty Mindset: Innovation Insights from the Frontiers of Food
AuthorVaughn Tan
PublisherColumbia University Press, 2020
ISBN0231551878, 9780231551878
Length287 pages
Subjects ›  › 

Business & Economics / Industries / Food Industry
Business & Economics / Management
Business & Economics / Organizational Behavior
Social Science / Sociology / General
  
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