National Culinary Review

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trying to do things that seem downright ridiculous, improbable and impossible.

While free spirits seek authenticity, iconoclasts break the mold and achieve things that others say cannot be done, according to Dr. Gregory Berns, distinguished chair of neuroeconomics at Emory University, Atlanta, writing in Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently (Harvard Business School Press, 2008). Perceiving things differently from other people, iconoclasts are constantly letting their minds go wherever they will, altering their mindsets, contexts and environments. As Thomas Edison put it, “Hell, there are no rules here—we're trying to accomplish something.” Inventing spherification, Ferran Adrià found a way to enclose liquid inside thin, gelatinous skins. Intriguingly, both he and Torres crossed paths with the great French chef, Jacques Maximin, the man who defined creativity as “not copying.”

IS FAILURE A HEALTHY OPTION?

Being optimists and craving progress,
we think of human capacity as
limitless. But human limits exist in
judging people who are doing any
task. While a person might have a
50% chance of selecting someone
to succeed at a task in the kitchen,
a really savvy chef might be able to
raise these odds to between 60% and
70%. Even chefs who make the very
best personnel decisions are going to
be far less than perfect, says Dr. John
D. Mayer, professor of psychology
at the University of New Hampshire,
Durham, N.H. “Nonetheless, that
modest improvement in accuracy
from 50% to 60% can make a big
difference in the life of a kitchen over
time,” he says.

Ben Franklin, whose inventions include
bifocals, the lightning rod, the first fire
department and a glass harmonica,
once noted, “I didn’t fail the test. I just
found 100 ways to do it wrong.”
Clearly, failure can be a way station
on the road to achievement. Author
J.K. Rowling toughed it out and lived
in a car before becoming world-
famous for the Harry Potter books.
Karen Trilevsky, once homeless, now
runs FullBloom Baking Company,
located in Newark, Calif. The
company generates an estimated
$42 million in sales annually, in
addition to offering scholarships for
students. Roy Choi found himself
down, out and unemployed, then
went on to revolutionize the food
world with his Kogi BBQ because he
took a chance on food trucks—a new
idea suggested by his friend and now
business partner Mark Manguera.

Great innovators and inventors don’t give up. “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work,” Thomas Edison said, adding, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” Then again, not every failure has to lead to a solution to be valuable. “Sometimes, just encountering a problem that you cannot solve enriches you personally,” Mayer says. In the end, “Soup is easier than people, even for good chefs/leaders.”

Iconoclasts and innovators need lots of stimulation to keep their creativity churning, Berns explains. Iconoclasts require constant input and changes of mental scenery, like Chicago chef Grant Achatz pursuing his yet-to-appear concept Next that will offer different dining experiences on an ongoing basis, perhaps a Parisian Escoffier-like dinner at one point, and Bangkok, 2050, at another.

uncertainty nor ridicule, and become leaders, movers and shakers. They know how to muster social enthusiasm and acceptance, and they know how to build name and face recognition, as Berns explains in Iconoclast. They also know how to build reputations for fairness.

The National Culinary Review | March 2011

Iconoclasts cannot do it your way, and why make them? They see things that you can’t. Successful iconoclasts fear neither

Rebels

While free spirits chase authenticity and go
their own way, rebels will not obey rules, no
matter what. Ask them to go right, they go
left. It’s part of their makeup. They find power
in defiance. “Often tolerated because of
exceptional competence, the rebel eventually
gets into trouble by offending or alienating
people in high places,” according to Pamela
R. Johnson, Ph.D., and Julie Indvik, Ph.D.,
in “Rebels, Criticizers, Backstabbers, and
Busybodies: Anger and Aggression at Work”
(Public Personnel Management, Volume 29,
No. 2, Summer 2000).