“Potato peel ice cream? How do you even come up with this stuff?” A look into the innovation processes and creativity of top Finnish chefs

Abstract

Culinary innovation is the practice of top chefs furthering the world of gastronomy and Haute Cuisine with the development of novel ideas of varying magnitude into finalized products. Yet despite research conducted in the past few decades by the likes of Ottenbacher & Harrington or Stierand et al., the field remains an under researched one. And what little research does exist is lacking and dated.

Prior researchers have sought to apply models either derived from unrelated industries to the field or developed through interpretations of discussions with professionals through the lens of researchers’ personal convictions. In addition, barring a few exceptions, most research does not concern itself much with the creativity and ideation that precludes innovation, leaving much space for inquiry.

Lastly, prior research is largely based on samples dating to the early 2000’s, and therefore cannot take into consideration the various technological, societal, and generational evolutions or their possible effects on culinary innovation or culinary creativity. Furthermore, most researchers have mainly limited their inquiries to professionals in Central and Western Europe, presuming an absence of cultural differences or some level of universality across temporal, cultural, and generational contexts.

This research, utilizing semi-structured qualitative interviews with 8 Finnish Haute Cuisine professionals conducted in 2018, and inter-subject understanding-based relativist/interpretivist constructive grounded theory, seeks to explore the culinary innovation realities of Haute Cuisine practitioners in Finland.

The findings will be used to develop a representation of the processes used by these chefs when ideating and innovating, as well as how chefs interpret the world around them for inspiration. The data will then be compared to prior research to verify the validity of their assumptions regarding universality. It is understood that due to the sample being representative of a different cultural, generational, and temporal context than those of previous researchers, it will serve as a good point of comparison.

A secondary aim of this research is also to help elucidate the world of these innovative chefs to outsiders, especially managers, so that they may better understand innovators of this type. It is hoped that with greater knowledge of the chefs’ processes, managers should be able to provide appropriate support to innovators to ensure a constant stream of quality innovations and help prevent situations in which work quality diminishes and threatens the commercial success of the Haute Cuisine enterprise.