Master Chefs, Masters of Art and Masters of Business
If cuisine can be considered a form of art, it's nonetheless a thriving form of business and chefs are often both artists and entrepreneurs. A special section of the Winter 2014 issue of the International Journal of Arts Management (volume 16, number 2) is thus entitled Chefs as Artists. Tensions and Challenges and includes works about cuisine as an artistic industry.
As a proof of the pivotal role they play in this genre of studies, two out of the three articles of the section are authored by Bocconi scholars.
Rossella Cappetta and Severino Salvemini (Department of Management and Technology) are co-authors, along with IESEG School of Management's Barbara Slavich, of Creativity and the Reproduction of Cultural Products: The Experience of Italian Haute Cuisine Chefs. Through the study of two haute cuisine restaurants, the authors reveal how creativity can be fostered and implemented in chefs' daily activities and highlight the importance of codification, knowledge "teachability," input, output and behavioural controls for guaranteeing an accurate reproduction of creative products and/or experiences.
Marta Inversini, Beatrice Manzoni and, again, Severino Salvemini (Department of Management and Technology) are the authors of Daniel Boulud: The Making of a Successful Creative Individual Business Model, an article that reviews the development of the activities of the French-American chef from apprentice to head of an international empire of restaurants, catering activities, online sale of private-label products and TV cooking shows.
Bocconi scholars consider cuisine, in the context of the symbolic economy, as a significant part of the Made in Italy at a par with fashion and design - that's the reason why a programme like SDA Bocconi's Master of Management in Food & Beverage has been devised. Too often, though, Italian chefs privilege the artistic dimension instead of the entrepreneurial one, with the consequence that firms are smaller than abroad. "Our work" Salvemini says, "intends to help enterprises grow and establish themselves as protagonists of the Made in Italy".