So how does an internationally renowned restaurant continue to innovate year after year? One of elBulli’s secrets is that all ingredients are classified into product families. For example: Fish, Flowers, Fats, Salts, Sausages, Juices, Sauces… These families become lists that a chef can use to make new dishes. She can decide to use a different flower, a different kind of fat, a different condiment, and the dish will be altered.

But it’s not just about the ingredients. The core of their creative process is something they call the Technique-Concept Search. They describe a technique as something that takes a series of ingredients and transforms it. Like how we make omelettes, salads, or sorbets. They are always on the look-out for new ways, new techniques, for making food. Some of their tamer discoveries have included savory ice cream and hot jellies. (Think about it, have you ever had hot Jello before?) In the creation of new concepts and techniques, Ferran’s team uses the following methods: association, inspiration, adaptation, deconstruction, and minimalism. In the book, they often state how difficult it is to describe these methods—especially things like inspiration or minimalism—which are subjective in nature and rely more on experience than following exact instructions.

As a Creative Director with my own set of tools and systems, I couldn’t help relating elBulli’s methods to that of Michael Michalko’s Thinkpak. The Thinkpak is a series of cards used to help push your ideas further, to experiment, to innovate. The cards are variations on the SCAMPER method, a clever acronym derived from Alex Osborn’s 9 principles for manipulating an object. I have listed these principles below, and placed elBulli’s methods in parentheses:

Substitute (ingredient swapping by classification)
Combine (association)
Adapt (adaptation)
Modify/Magnify (see next paragraph below)
Put to another use (inspiration)
Eliminate (minimalism)
Reverse/Rearrange (deconstruction)

Modify and Magnify come into effect when elBulli considers the entire experience through the lens of the guest. How do they experience the food through all of their senses? The chefs think about how the food tastes, of course, but also how it looks, smells, feels (textures), and even how it sounds to their patrons. Lastly, they think about the emotions brought on by the food through memory, association, and the atmosphere at the restaurant. They call these emotions the sixth sense.

elBulli is now closed, but the inspiration and creativity will live on through the elBulli Foundation: a combination museum and think-tank for creative cuisine. Ferran and his team are some of the most creative people in the world, but it is important to remember that they became that way through a conscious process. They created a system to classify common ingredients. They transformed existing cooking techniques and discovered others by adhering to a philosophy of innovation principals very similar to SCAMPER. And finally, they created experiences for the customer that considered every conceivable layer of sensation.

If you want to be the best, most innovative company/business/agency/school/hospital/franchise/corner store/entrepreneur in the world, feel free to adapt these same techniques for your industry.

To sum up, make creative PIE:

1. Process: Alter your processes (and look for new ones) with tools like the SCAMPER method. What changes have the most promise? What works best?
2. Ingredients: Categorize and switch up your ‘ingredients’ (the elements that make up your product or service). Mix and match until you have exhausted all possibilities.
3. Experience: Put yourself in your customers’ shoes (as well as their hats, pants, shirts, skirts, coats, and even underwear). How do they perceive you or your product? How do they feel when they experience it?

Detail from elBullilastWaltz Poster of elBulli's last served meal

I love self help books. They are filled with strange human systems and ideas. I also hate them. There is usually a small seed of an idea that is broken down and then blown out over hundreds of pages. More often than not, the author could have explained everything you needed to know in a small brochure. Here are some of my self-help book ideas. Please send me your fake book cover illustrations if you feel inspired (see below):

Note: This list was created using the patented 10 Ideas In Ten Minutes™ creative method. (You can read about it in my Creative Method and Systems presentation, slide 97)

1. Don’t Be A Clippy - How to help people without becoming really, really annoying
2. The Third Place - Working from Starbucks and other stories of caffeinated entrepreneurship
3. The Holy Bible (Star Wars Edition featuring the NEW! Book of Jedi)
4. [Update Available] – Living with perpetual iterations of self, society, and socialmedia
5. The Off Button – When to turn off, tone down, and go out
6. Living in Your Car for Fun and Profit!
7. WTF is Wednesday Thursday Friday? – Web acronyms made easy
8. The Porno Diet – Master weight problems by thinking about sex
9. It’s All About You – The world’s first personalized print-on-demand non-fiction best-seller (featuring everything we could dig up on you and your friends through social media websites)
10. 15 Minute Warning – How the desire for instant fame is creating a generation of disillusionment

Email me your fake book covers for these fake books and I will publish my favourites here later.

Posted via email from Jason Theodor’s Creative Method and Systems Channel

Posted via email from Jason Theodor’s Creative Method and Systems Channel

Download a PDF of The Creative Method and Systems.

Sign up for the Creative Method and Systems workshop on May 9th in Toronto

After five years of promising myself I would write a book on creativity, I finally got most of my ideas together in one package. I presented this package on April 28th, 2009, at FITC Toronto (an eclectic innovation, design, and technology conference). Cramming half a decade of thinking into a one hour presentation is challenging, but the net result is this distillation of The Creative Method and Systems. It has garnered some attention on SlideShare.net, becoming the Top Presentation of the Day in less than 24 hours after posting. I know this was due, in part, by some wonderful Twitter followers who kept broadcasting and relinking to the slideshow. Thank you very much for the attention. This was also due to a timely interview in BlogTO about creativity at FITC by Corina. Thank you to her as well.

So what’s next? An audio addition to the SlideShare presentation is coming in the next few weeks. I’m also creating a Ning community to challenge, use, and discuss these ideas. If you are interested, you can sign up here. But please note that there is very limited space to start and that you may be placed on a waiting list.

There will be a lot more, as this is just the beginning of The Creative Method and Systems. It will continue to grow and evolve as I work toward improving the sections that need more attention, and reacting to comments and suggestions.

If you are interested in inviting me to speak at your school, institution, or agency, feel free to contact me at Jason.Theodor[at]gmail.com. Please put CREATIVE METHOD in the subject.

Thanks again to everyone who has downloaded, watched, favourited, re-tweeted, and linked to The Creative Method and Systems.