Creativity in Haute Cuisine

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Organization Science, 19: 187-201. Ferguson, P. (2005). L'ostentation culinaire. ... 187. Karpik, L. (2000). Le Guide Rouge Michelin. Sociologie du Travail, 42(3), ...
Creativity in Haute Cuisine: Strategic Knowledge and Practice in Gourmet Kitchens

Isabelle BOUTY *

Marie-Léandre GOMEZ

School of Business and Economics

ESSEC Business School

University of Western Paris at Nanterre

Avenue Bernard Hirsch

200 avenue de la République

BP5021

92001 NANTERRE CEDEX

95021 CERGY PONTOISE

France

France

E-mail : [email protected]

E-mail: [email protected]

A more recent version has been published in Journal of culinary Science and Technology, volume 11 n°1, 80-95 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15428052.2012.728979 Please refer to that one.

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Creativity in Haute Cuisine: Strategic Knowledge and Practice in Gourmet Kitchens

Abstract Creativity is often considered essential because it is the seed of innovation, and thus key to build a competitive advantage, particularly in the restaurant industry. However, little research has so far detailed how creativity, as a specific activity, happens. We investigate creativity in high-end restaurants with a practice-based perspective, which emphasizes doings, and the social, situated, relational, material, and perceptual dimensions of creativity. We build on an empirical in-depth study of three French Michelin-starred restaurants to examine the minutiae of creative practices. We show that creativity is organized in space and time, and distinguish three types of creative work in gourmet restaurants.

Keywords: creativity, practice, restaurant, haute cuisine, Michelin,

INTRODUCTION Creativity has long been acknowledged as a major strength to build a competitive advantage through innovation (Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995; Weaver 2000), particularly in the restaurant industry (Fuller, Hanlan and Wilde 2007; Ottenbacher and Harrington, 2007, 2009). However, how creative work is carried out in this perspective remains unclear: how does creative work happen, how is it performed, what are creative activities made of in restaurants? This is the research question that we explore in the present article, based on the analysis of high-end gourmet kitchens. In haute cuisine the question of linking creativity and competitive advantage is especially salient: creativity is now considered vital to conquer the second and 2

the third Michelin stars (Beaugé 2008, Ferguson 2005) in addition to the natural prerequisite of outstanding products and services (Rao, Monin and Durand 2003). However, if all elite restaurants are subject to this haute cuisine rule, competitive success is obviously uneven and only some restaurants and chefs achieve highest ratings. We all know the names of some of these chefs or their restaurants (Alain Ducasse's Louis XV in Monaco, Gordon Ramsay in London, Jean-Georges Vongerichten in New York etc), and acknowledge their reputation and mastery. As haute cuisine is highly institutionalized, these restaurants could in fact serve as benchmarks for others in these regards (Ottenbacher and Harrington, 2007). We have a lot to learn from a detailed analysis of these organizations. For this purpose it is yet necessary to scrutinize knowledge and practices that ground these restaurants' superior response to guidebook's and clients' expectations in relation to creativity. We undertake this investigation with the view that creativity is a social practice: something that chefs and their teams do, before engaging innovation processes, in the specific context of their restaurants (their style, localization, the team's skills, and the kitchen appliances), and of haute cuisine (expectations of the clients, the guidebooks and critics). Therefore we focus our attention on individuals, doings, and their interrelationships with the specific organizations and haute cuisine. Our findings reveal that creativity practice in haute cuisine has nothing to do with serendipity. We distinguish three facets in creative practice (idea work, creative teamwork, and naming), and highlight how chefs organize creativity in time, space, and teams. In particular, we stress that idea work remains the privilege of head chefs, in contrast to collective creative work that takes place in the kitchen. In the following pages, we will first sketch out the theoretical background on creativity as a practice and on haute cuisine. Then we will turn to describing our research method. Our empirical results are presented in the third section, with individual idea work, creative teamwork, and naming. The paper closes with a discussion of our results and a conclusion. 3

BACKGROUND Creativity as a Social Practice

Both scholars and the press repeatedly depict creativity as an essential foundation of value creation in contemporary organizations and environments (Amabile et al., 1996; George, 2007; Oldham and Cummings, 1996; Weaver 2000 for example). Creativity is essential to innovation in many regards, from products to services, work, and social progress. Organizations, and individuals alike, are growingly expected (if not required) to be creative. It is therefore no surprise that scholars started investigated creativity, its conditions, and benefits. Creativity is "the production of novel and useful ideas" (Amabile et al., 1996: 1155). In this perspective, scholars (for example Anderson et al. 2004; Amabile et al. 1996) stressed the fundamental distinction between creativity and innovation, the later being "the successful implementation of creative ideas within an organization" (Amabile et al., 1996, p. 1155). Creativity and innovation are thus two related yet highly different phenomena. They are related because creativity is a necessary precursor and "the seed of all innovation" (Amabile et al., p. 1155). Yet creativity and innovation are different because they refer to distinct processes: generating new and useful ideas (creativity) vs. intentionally introducing and successfully implementing ideas within the organization (innovation). They also can happen independently from each other: the relationship between creativity and innovation is not necessarily linear. Creativity can happen at different stages, and creativity can regard a wide variety of topics, from products and services, to work, processes, and structures (George, 2007). That creativity is a specific phenomenon, different from innovation, should however not lead to understanding creativity as pure wild thinking nor as problem solving. As George

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(2007) and Runco (2004) insist, creativity is the production of ideas that are both novel and useful: new useless ideas and old useful ideas are not creative. Scholars who investigated the organizational conditions that support creativity pointed to a variety of elements favorable to this particular work: mindless activities (Elsbach & Hargadon, 2006), large attention width and even a different work focus (Runco, 2004; Simonton, 1997; Uzzi & Spiro, 2005; Amabile et al., 2005), and moderate workload pressure (Amabile et al., 1996). Prior studies also highlighted the social side of creativity. They showed that creativity (either individual or collective) makes sense within a specific social group, and that social rules and networks both frame and sustain creative processes (Cattani & Ferriani, 2008, Perry-Smith & Shelley, 2003, Kern, 2006 for example). Moreover, they suggested that material elements such as tools, equipment, prototypes, were both sources and vectors of creativity. As a matter of facts, following a practice-based approach (Nicolini et al. 2003, Chia and Holt 2006), we will consider all these elements and analyze creative work in its organizational and institutional context with its structure, its rules and its stakes. In the restaurants and hospitality literature, this practice approach has been barely used to investigate creativity so far. However, prior studies pointed to a collection of elements involved in early innovation processes that strongly motivate its adoption here: for example the variety of inspiration sources and actors (including peers, clients and suppliers), operational considerations, products and seasons, tools and technology, and multiple screening criteria (Ottenbacher & Harrington, 2007, 2009; Harrington 2004). In addition, the hospitality literature has most often regarded creativity as an initial phase of the innovation process in restaurants. Very little attention has specifically been dedicated to creativity per se; despite being acknowledged as foundational, it has mostly been mentioned as "tacit skills […] chefs play[ing] around with ideas in their heads" (Ottenbacher and Harrington, 2007: 447), based on products and other sources of inspiration. Given the importance of creativity, further 5

investigations are needed to elaborate these views. Last, authors (Ottenbacher and Harrington, 2007; 2009) pointed out that innovation at Michelin-starred restaurants involved different actors (cooks, peers, and the supplier's network), iterations between ideas and dishes, and granted important place to operational and restaurant-related issues. Whether these elements are also involved in creativity or limited to innovation and are questions that a practice-based approach of creativity can help answering. Haute Cuisine and Gourmet Restaurants

Haute cuisine is the cultural field composed by agents and organizations engaged in the world of elite gourmet restaurants and fine dining (Parkhurst-Ferguson, 1998: 637; Rao et al., 2003: 798): the restaurants themselves, their chefs, employees and clients, textual producers (gastronomic critics, journalists and specialized journals), suppliers and contractors, some cooking schools and, last but not least, guidebooks. It is today highly institutionalized (Fauchart and Von Hippel 2008; Gomez and Bouty, 2011; Rao et al. 2003) and internationalized (Parkhurst-Ferguson 2004; Svejenova, Planellas, and Mazza 2007): field's conditions, expectations, rules and stakes are both highly influential and internationally shared by elite chefs throughout the world (Authors, 2012). Central to the haute cuisine field is the fact that overall success is institutionally defined according to the restaurants' ratings by major gastronomic guidebooks (Parkhurst-Ferguson 1998; Rao et al. 2003). Michelin is one of the most important culinary guidebook (Karpik, 2000, 2010; Rao et al., 2003). It is also acknowledged internationally as the most serious (Johnson et al., 2005; Ottenbacher & Harrington, 2007, 2010) and its conception of haute cuisine grows influential throughout the world (Authors, 2012). More specifically, the Michelin stars are the criterion most valued by all field agents (Durand et al., 2007; ParkhurstFerguson 1998, p. 20), were they restaurants, clients or critics. It is also worth mentioning that 6

although the number of stars is a highly social criterion, it nonetheless bears significant consequences on restaurants' revenue: according to Johnson, Surlemont, Nicod, and Revaz (2005, p. 173 and p. 179), moving from two to three-star ranking involves a 30 percent increase in revenue and losing a star involves up to a 50 percent fall. The gastronomic quality of the restaurant is central to Michelin's evaluations and stars (Gomez and Bouty 2011; Karpik 2000, 2010). It spans two aspects: daily operational excellence (quality of products, cooking, and wine) and cuisine inventiveness (creativity in the menu, new dishes, new ideas and gastronomic advances). Daily operational excellence is compulsory in starred restaurants. Yet, it is clearly not enough to defend a three-star ranking. Alike in haute couture, chefs are expected to regularly create new dishes and menus. Creativity is nowadays a prerequisite to maintain a position in haute cuisine, especially in three-star restaurants (Beaugé 2008), and the chef's ability to be gastronomically creative is highly valued, with the precondition of technical excellence (Parkhurst-Ferguson 1998, p. 637; Parkhurst-Ferguson 2004; Rao at al. 2003). Being considered a reference for particular cooking techniques, gastronomic universe or specific food products grew over the years in relation, as a stake for most elite chefs (Durand et al. 2007). Associated notoriety is also useful to maintain visibility, value innovation and attract international clients. New dishes are therefore an occasion for demonstrating the chef's excellence (Ferguson 2005), and defending the restaurant's rating. At the same time, three-star chefs and their kitchen teams are expected to create dishes up to their level of sophistication and perfection (Beaugé 2008), and creativity is not required for the sake of newness: the introduction of misjudged novelties in a menu can be detrimental to a restaurant's rating. Only a few new dishes are introduced each year. They are the result of long lasting efforts and though vital, their creation is a very demanding practice (Ottenbacher and Harrington, 2007).

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Today (2012), less than 30 restaurants in France, and less than 60 in Europe are awarded Michelin’s three stars (the maximum grade) over a total population of about 2000 European starred restaurants. We chose our cases among them.

METHODOLOGY We conducted a qualitative and comparative analysis of three French restaurants each awarded three Michelin stars. Table 1 summarizes our sampling criteria and the main characteristics of our cases. -----------------------------------------------------------------INSERT TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE -----------------------------------------------------------------Basing our approach on performed tasks as “real work” (Cook and Brown 1999, p. 387), we collected both secondary and primary data. In addition to constituting necessary multiple sources of evidence (Denzin 1989; Eisenhardt 1989; Lincoln and Guba 1985; Miles and Huberman 1994; Yin 1984), this was also a means to better address the sensitive aspects of cooking and gastronomy. We collected secondary data from media, as writings are a highly pertinent source to analyze haute cuisine as a field (Parkhurst-Ferguson 1998; Rao et al. 2003, p. 816). We also gathered secondary data in the form of video recordings of the three chefs during creative sessions available from the Internet and video documentaries (Bensadoun, 2006; De Maistre, 2005). These visual data were especially useful as we could play and replay them. In addition, we conducted direct observations in each of the three kitchens. The observations lasted about five hours each. They gave us the opportunity to capture the various facets of the kitchen life and organization: morning quiet hours, before sitting (preparation of ingredients, staff briefings, client list scanning), during (cooking and service under pressure) 8

and after the sitting (debriefing, cleaning and supplies ordering). We systematically transcribed our observation notes in full detail immediately after the sessions for greater accuracy. Similarly, and in order to formally integrate video recordings in our analysis, we fully transcribed selected sections that showed creative work. We complemented these observations and recordings with interviews, with each of the three chefs, their second-chefs and members of their teams at large. On average, each of these interviews lasted an hour and a half. We fully transcribed them for analysis purpose. This qualitative material resulted in a rich data set, which we analyzed with the view that creative work is something that people do. In a first analytical step and following our practical perspective, we coded our data for each restaurant according to who were the actors involved in creative work, where and when they were involved, and for the pursuit of which purpose. On this base we identified three creative practices. In a second step, we further investigated each creative practice comparatively across the three restaurants in order to refine our understanding, especially in relation to the individual, organizational and institutional dimensions.

RESULTS: CASES ANALYSIS Our data indicate that creativity at the restaurants is a three-facet phenomenon: individual idea work, creative teamwork, and naming. Each of these facets is organized in time and space, and involves different actors as is presented in Figure 1: -----------------------------------------------------------------INSERT FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE -----------------------------------------------------------------In this section we examine each of these three facets in turn. 9

Chefs’ Idea Work

In the first place, and consistent with previous descriptions (Authors 2010, Ottenbacher and Harrington 2009), we observed that creativity in the kitchen is mainly based on idea work. Idea work is pure idea generation performed by chefs alone or with non-cook mates outside the kitchen. In restaurant A, chef A saves his mornings to "think about [his] personal work" (interview). It is in fact the moment he devotes to idea work. Chef A finds inspiration in modern contemporary art, travels, and in his regular exchanges with a chemist friend of his, with whom he investigates chemistry in food ingredients. They explore products, textures, combinations, and colors: for example, oysters, which are at the same time ugly and good, or how the taste of a preparation is affected by the position of the crunchy ingredient (on top or at the bottom). Together they take a constructivist approach on sensations, directly referring to such work as that of Kandinsky. For instance, chef A developed a foie gras Chantilly, served with orange reduction and grilled Paris mushrooms. The dish opens new perspectives on one of the most important ingredient of French gastronomy with both a revolutionary texture and the mix with the sugared, acid and spicy flavour of orange. In restaurant B, chef B tries not to be in the kitchen before mid mornings and to save the quiet early hours to distance him from his kitchen work. He finds most of his inspiration in arts (sculpture, paintings, music) and in his market garden. He also happened to work with external mates, such as perfume designers or gardeners, to find new associations: "I interpret recipes based on the fragrances she [the perfume designer] created for me […] the mangosteen fruit fragrance with vineyard peach, rose and vanilla inspired me with the Brittany lobster with beer vinaigrette and bergamot honey" (interview). In restaurant C, chef C also saves special moments to conduct idea work alone in his personal office / study room, or through informal conversations with such partners as suppliers, wine producers; or peers. 10

As he also explained us, throughout years, he additionally grew to consider many mindless moments as in fact constituting idea work, such as when he visits museums, foreign cities, goes shopping or attends professional events. His inspiration sources are rooted in a deep knowledge of classical gastronomy history and rules, travels and most important to him, in terroir products. In all, we observed that a good share of creativity in these restaurants is mostly individual and organized in time and space by the chefs. First, and even if cooking during sittings can be inspirational, our three chefs dedicate specific time and efforts to idea work; they extract from the rush of daily cooking to engage separately in this particular activity. Second, they conduct this creative work outside the kitchen; idea work benefits from different non-kitchen environments. Last, chefs always conduct idea work without their teams; in this perspective idea work is somehow individual. However, idea work does not consist in genius chefs working on their own; chefs do collaborate at this stage yet only with external non-cook partners with whom they cultivate ideas. They base their idea work on objects, activities, and influences that span a very wide scope, wider than that of their restaurants.

Creative teamwork in the kitchen

The second facet of creativity that we recorded happens in the restaurants, with a small team of cooks. Like idea work, this creative teamwork is organized in time and space: chefs and selected cooks meet during quiet hours, when they can be alone and undisturbed in the kitchen. In restaurant A and B the reduced creative team is composed of the second-chef and some station chefs (meat and fish at minimum at A, garde-manger/vegetables chefs at B) whereas in restaurant C, only the second-chef is involved. This state of fact is related to the particular situation of restaurant C where chef C planned to retire soon at the time of our 11

observations and therefore transferred the entire responsibility of the kitchen to his secondchef, who himself, had a second assistant in the kitchen. In all three restaurants we observed that there was a significant amount of creative work at this stage: the initial chef idea is in fact open and discussions drive to changes, refinements, adjustments and further elaborations in a variety of directions such as products, textures, proportions, aesthetics, and the design in the plate. Creative teamwork complements chefs’ idea work. With creative teamwork, all three chefs aim at sharing their initial ideas, their vision with the reduce team, more than prescribing instructions: they use words, metaphors, or analogies. Their evocations take different forms. Chef A writes notes where he mixes pencil sketches, short literary texts, indications on some ingredients, and sometimes descriptions of some of the techniques he imagined. Today, the technical part is especially important chef A told us, due to the integration of the chemical inspirations. Chef B evokes his ideas with verbal elements but also paintings, drawings, collages, and music pieces. "Let’s take for example something I had in mind […] It was a harmony of spinach, oranges, carrot, sesame oil, lemon with a light caramelized deglazing of langoustines. I tell them: 'the carrot mousseline takes the orange flavor. Just to have a hint, just like a guess. Spinach just lightly cooked in salted butter. Sesame oil, a zest of candied lemon". For this particular idea, Chef B also showed us the card he drew with color pencils. The dish was not represented, yet the contrast of the pastel colors and the overall sketch rendered the freshness, the harmony and happiness of his idea: a springtime feeling dish based on wintertime ingredients. Chef C for his part directly discusses with his second-chef. They evoke feelings, tasting experiences, exchange ideas about breaking interpretations of classical recipes. On this base creative teamwork consists in ideation around more concrete elements than idea work: the relationship to products and senses is central in creative teamwork. We 12

observed that quite soon, all three chefs and their reduced teams cook to incarnate ideas and exchange directly over intermediary products and sensations. They taste, touch, watch, and smell preparations: products and sensations are pivotal. This process, as part of creativity in the restaurant, reaches an end when the chef decides whether the novel idea is worth being turned into a dish an integrated on the menu. If he does so, then another, radically different process is engaged under the responsibility of the second chef to successfully implement the idea in daily cooking at the restaurant. However as cooks regularly put forward and we also observed, even once a dish is regularly served in the restaurant, there are still some changes in the way it is prepared. Cooks adapt seasoning, cooking temperatures or duration; chefs change the main products to test other new ideas… In fact we observed that chefs used existing dishes as creative material. Altogether a dish is never definitely set; it is always a matter of creativity in the kitchen. Naming

The third aspect of creative practice that we recorded happens after innovation, and is in relation to finding the dish's name. In our three restaurants it is held as critical because the dish name participates to creating gastronomic experiences and emotions. It carries evocations of the dish's universe and the sensations that chefs intended to convey. Chefs and their seconds specifically conduct this creative work. To name dishes, they use metaphors, literary descriptions, and evocations. For instance in restaurant A there is a two level naming. The first level naming refers to the main ingredient (for example "Lozère Lamb"); the following text (4 to 6 lines) indicates the various components, their preparation ("tartar"; "deboned") and refers to the idea, the sensations, and the evocations ("abstract"; "modest"; "unwonted"). As a result, the complete name of this dish in the restaurant's menu is (we also kept it the way it is presented on the menu, with several lines): 13

"LOZÈRE LAMB Seared saddle of Lozère lamb rubbed with oregano. Crispy sweetbreads, black rice, home-made harissa sauce. Cooking juice thickened with tamarin. Chop cooked à la milanaise, chard with pine kennels. Kidneys cooked with vaudouvan, a basket of agria potaoes. Crepinette of lamb’s foot, red onion scampi." At restaurants B and C dishes names' are shorter though still a matter of creativity and attention for the chef. They indicate the main characteristics of the dish (ingredients or cooking) and dominant seasoning or color. At restaurant B, they most often consist in two lines: the first line indicates the dominant preparation and the second refers to supporting elements. For example: "Corrèze sweetbreads with licorice root aroma Young leaks" At restaurant C names are presented on a single line as for example "Young pigeon 'en habit vert' with foie gras; truffle fumet". These variations in sophistication in fact reflect the chefs' inspirations sources and the way they conceive their cuisine. They are vectors of creativity and vehicles of ideas and experiences. As such, names are integral part of dishes and naming constitutes a key creative practice to which chefs devote lots of attention. This aspect of creativity rejoins Fine’s (1996) observation that wording, cooking vocabulary, and rhetoric are of special importance in cooks' professional identity. Given the importance granted to creativity by the chefs we observed, this rhetorical dimension appears inherent to their creative status.

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DISCUSSION Our comparative analysis showed that creativity is multi-facetted in Michelin starred restaurants: chefs’ idea work, creative kitchen teamwork, and naming. Despite its generative nature, creativity also emerged as a highly organized phenomenon, in time, space, and team. In each three creative facets, we also recorded that head chefs are predominant: they are those who both organize and play a central active role. They are even the only restaurant members to be involved in idea work. In an organizational perspective and given its foundational importance, it is somehow surprising that idea work is kept mostly individual and external at these high-end restaurants. This result is all the more remarkable as Way, Ottenbacher and Harrington (2011) recently showed that crowdsourcing was particularly beneficial to idea refinement. Are the secondchefs unable to create and produce new useful ideas? Do head chefs discard their secondchefs’ new ideas because they are egomaniacs? Articulating our results with past literature rather points to a more fundamental explanation: only the head chef can conduct idea work because of the conditions of practice in haute cuisine kitchens. Past studies (Authors 2003, 2010) already depicted distinctive spheres of practice in high-end restaurants kitchens. They described the head chef's practices as in relation to gastronomic creation, to the management of interfaces and more incidentally to technical matters; the second-chef's practices are in relation to kitchen management, technique and innovation; the stations chef's and cooks practice are in relation to daily cooking. Our results on who is involved in the various facets of creativity at three-star restaurants fully converge with these descriptions. Head chefs conduct idea work, hold active role in creative teamwork and naming; they infuse their restaurants with personal new ideas and gastronomic advances; they respond to the haute cuisine creativity injunction. That second-chefs are involved to a far lesser extend and always 15

with a kitchen focus reflects their orientation towards achieving operational excellence. In other words, the field's institutional rules (pressures towards both gastronomic creativity and operational excellence) require the conduct of two sets of practices in the organizations that rest on the shoulders of different actors Building further on past creativity literature helps understanding why these actors have to be different: creativity requires conditions hardly compatible with other orientations in the restaurants. In particular, past creativity literature (Amabile 1996; Farmer, Tierney, and KungMcintyre 2003) suggests that hierarchy and formality of organizational structures and expectations are impediments to creativity in a number of ways. As a matter of facts, the responsibility of second-chefs in haute cuisine is clearly defined in relation to daily operations. The rewards they can obtain are linked to these kitchen responsibilities. The attitude and expectations of their fellow workers (head chef, station chefs, and cooks) spur them not to engage in other practices, such as idea work. Second-chefs only participate to creative practices when required to, later on, within creative teamwork, since it is part of the job and an expectation of head chefs. On the contrary, there are many internal (e.g. kitchen team) and external (e.g. media, financial partners, guidebooks) expectations regarding a head chef’s creativity, which spur head chefs to permanently conduct creative work and in particular idea work. Second and reinforcing this phenomenon is the constriction of the second-chefs' work focus. Work focus and attention width have been acknowledged to exert an influence on creativity (Runco 2004; Simonton 1999; Uzzi and Spiro 2005), by conditioning the number of “knowledge elements that are available for combination into new variation” (Amabile et al. 2005, p. 368). These elements are as numerous and varied as attention is wide. In the kitchen of a three-star restaurant, the second-chef is focused on daily operational excellence necessary to gain and retain three Michelin stars. His/her locus of practice and focus of attention is the 16

kitchen. In contrast, a Chef’s work allows wider attention deployment to a variety of domains: relations with existing suppliers and the search for new suppliers, management of worldwide relations with media, clients, and peers that they meet at professional social events (Authors, 2010). Chefs move in with creators in other businesses and artistic fields. In all, their attention is wide, producing numerous and varied elements to be used into new combinations whereas second-chefs do not have such opportunities. Third, as highlighted by Amabile et al. (1996, p. 1161) workload and time pressure impedes creativity. In three-star restaurants and as a consequence of their strategic responsibilities, second-chefs dedicate most of their time and energy to the daily operations in order to achieve excellence at each sitting. In contrast, chefs can save moments during the day, even during sittings, to escape this pressure and accomplish more “mindless” activities (Elsbasch and Hargadon 2006), such as discussing with clients in the dining room, wandering around the kitchen, exploring the fridge etc. Altogether, second-chefs' practices are barely compatible with creativity (especially idea work) in haute cuisine. In order to exert their creativity and practice idea work, secondchefs in fact need to change their status and their conditions for practice by becoming head chefs themselves while relying on a second-chef or equivalent to manage daily operations. Such conclusion also means that a genius creator head chef does suffice to win and defend three Michelin stars. The specific role played by the head chef in regard of creativity is necessary yet not sufficient. Creativity is nothing but the sterile generation of new ideas if there are no superior cooks to materialize those ideas under the authority of a second-chef. In addition to institutional and organizational features, our results also point to the difficulties of conducting and stimulating creativity in restaurants. In particular chefs all insisted that idea work is a process that in fact cannot be observed or described. Chefs can describe their sources of inspiration: the mastery of culinary technique and history, foreign culinary traditions, arts, architecture, perfumes, and even shop windows on the street… Chefs 17

can also describe their ideas as the product of idea work: they write texts; they make sketches with color pencils, collages… But Chefs cannot explain what happens in their heads, and they cannot teach idea work. For a good part, creativity is a practice that can only be developed by individuals as they progressively come to be involved into it. In this regard, creative teamwork therefore holds special importance in the making of future elite chefs as it represents a unique opportunity to involve them in creative practice. It is not sufficient however because idea work is different and, as we already put forward, requires distancing from kitchen matters. The more elite chefs interact with external partners and elements the more pertinent ideas they will be able to produce. As paradoxical as it may sound to some, that an elite chef is not always in the kitchen during sittings is in fact beneficial to the gastronomic level of the restaurant. Creating new gastronomic experiences and delights requires chefs interacting with the world, in some ways similar to that of other artists. Haute cuisine chefs may be business man, and managers, but they are also craftsman and artists creating sensations and emotions.

CONCLUSION In this article, we examined how creativity happens that leads to innovation and organizational success, with the analysis of three-star kitchens. In haute cuisine the question is especially salient as institutional field's rules place gastronomic expectations of high creativity upon chefs. Those restaurants which better respond to these expectations are awarded with the maximum grade by Michelin; they therefore can be regarded as exemplar. Based on in-depth studies at three-star restaurants to analyze creative practices, we show that creativity is multifacetted. It encompasses idea work, creative kitchen teamwork, and naming. These three facets are complementary to each other, and happen both independently from and in relation 18

to innovation processes (especially as precursors, and closing). We also show that despite their generative nature, these creative practices are highly organized in time, space, and participants. In particular, we suggest that although foundational, idea work is a privilege of the head chef because of the permanent tension created by Michelin's expectations of both operational excellence and creativity. The chef is the only one who can benefit from the conditions necessary to idea work in three-star restaurants. These results bear theoretical implications as they put forward the highly specific nature of creative work in restaurants. Further research will be therefore necessary to investigate creativity per se in more details, as a phenomenon related to yet different from innovation. Other kinds of restaurants, of different size and nature could also be investigated in this regard. On a more practical side, our results shed light on the necessity to organize creativity as a separate activity in restaurants: to be carried out, it requires specific conditions, and specific actors with different degrees and types of involvement.

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