How to stay creative in the kitchen; some words of advice from Massimo Bottura, the man responsible for what has been once again voted the best restaurant in the world, Osteria Francescana. 

Chef Massimo Bottura chose to upend convention in 1995 when he opened his restaurant Osteria Francescana in Modena, Italy. Serving radically reinvented Italian dishes in a culture that has always placed a premium on tradition, Massimo’s daring proved no flash in the pan. In 2016, two decades after the daring setup and successfully attaining a three-Michelin-star status, Osteria secured the top spot on the list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants. And it’s just been named number one again.

What was regarded as a risky move at the time – rebelling against beloved recipes shared across generations- made Bottura the star he has become. That success could have bred complacency, followed by failure, as so often happens in companies across industries. Instead at Osteria, success set the stage for further innovation and creativeness. This restaurant holds two major lessons for organisations around the world that are built on innovation and want to preserve and bolster their creative edge.

Always keep evolving.

Innovative organisations don’t worry about how to maintain excellence so much as how to find new excellence. At Osteria Francescana, dishes are cooked to perfection, but the recipes are never quite finished Bottura expects his meals to evolve over time.

Consider the signature dish Le cinque stagionature del Parmigiano Reggiano in diverse consistenze e temperature, or “the five different ages of Parmigiano Reggiano in five different textures and temperatures”. The idea first came to Bottura 20 years go as an experiment with different textures and temperatures. Initially, he envisioned “three different ages”. But then “three” became “four,” and, in time, “five.” The dish celebrates what stagionatura, or aging, does to a wheel of Parmigino. The 4-month-old cheese is made into a hot soufflé, the 30 month old cheese into a warm sauce, the 36 month old cheese into a chilled foam, the 40 month cheese into a crisp, and the 50 month old cheese transformed into a light foam that the kitchen staff call an “air.” By exploring the fundamentals of how the cheese behaves, Bottura created a dish as dynamic as it is delicious.

Reward novelty over predictability.

Bottura keeps his team sharp and engaged by opening their minds to their own potential for creative thinking. This can include asking his staff to create dishes based on a piece of music, a painting, or a memory. “I had been here for just a couple of months, and I was getting used to Bottura’s style,” Canadian-born chef de partie Jessica Rosval said. “He burst into the kitchen one day and said, ‘okay, everybody, new project for today: Lou Reed, Take a Walk on the Wild Side. Everybody make a dish.’ And I was left standing there wondering where to start.”

But Rosval’s initial panic soon turned to excitement. “We created a wide variety of dishes. Some people focused on the bass line of the song. Some people focused on the lyrics or the era it was written in. we had this diverse array of different plates that were created from this moment of inspiration when Massimo had been listening to the song in his car.”

When you experience novelty at work, job satisfaction increases, along with creativity and overall performance. Novelty also leads to greater confidence. Many workplaces focus on finding ways to instil uniformity in how employees go about their jobs, when, in fact, novelty should be the priority.

Bottura is a charismatic leader who started his culinary career by breaking rules in a context – Italian cooking – which follows an extremely stringent set of rules. Time-honored recipes are not supposed to be questioned or changed. By reinventing traditional Italian dishes, Bottura made his company the success it is today. By constantly challenging his staff and asking them to look at dishes and ingredients with a fresh perspective, everyone working at the restaurant embraces the new and expands his or her skills. Their menus is always evolving and so are their talents.

When growth becomes the goal of everyone in your organisation, complacency doesn’t have time to take root and radical ideas have the chance to emerge time and time again.

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