Creative Hot Spots: A Network Analysis of German Michelin‐Starred Chefs

Abstract

The Michelin Guide is a well-respected source of information for the culinary consumer, and the stars awarded to the chefs by Michelin are powerful signs of culinary achievements. This study focuses on the career paths of Michelin-starred chefs in Germany and aims at identifying the creative hot spots of the culinary domain. Through analysing the career trajectories of 262 chefs by means of social network analysis, it was found that the culinary network comprises a dense core, although some prolific chefs can be found at the periphery or even as isolates. Individual significance for the network -expressed as centrality -was found to be independent of the actor's star rating. Ties between chefs with different star ratings occur more often than between chefs with similar star ratings. The findings suggest that fewer ties are more beneficial for individual creative productivity and that knowledge transfers are more likely to happen between chefs with different levels of experience, skills and creative ability. Although creativity is still a personalized process, the acceptance and adaptation of the creative output is a social phenomenon, hence, this study underlined the suitability of social network analysis as a methodology for future studies of creative processes.

Knowledge management, social media and employee creativity

“…However, recent research provides significant evidence showing that in order to maximise the efficiency of the individuals' creativity, firms have to primarily nurture and support collective thinking rather than individual cognitive processes (Baer, 2010;Hargadon and Bechky, 2006). Indeed, research in creativity is immigrating from an individual focus to a social and KM perspective (Aubke, 2013;Hemphälä and Magnusson, 2012) and it stresses the need to identify the factors influencing the individual cognitive processes by focusing on people's accessibility to diverse knowledge such as, the employees' social structures (Perry-Smith, 2006;Hemphälä and Magnusson, 2012) and their collaborative networking ties (Hargadon and Bechky, 2006;Baer, 2010;Aubke, 2013).…”

“…The importance of social relationships for creativity is also adopted by Perry-Smith and who developed a social perspective on creativity. Although actor-centric creativity research traditionally focused on domain-relevant knowledge alone (Aubke, 2013), Perry-Smith and highlighted the importance of cognitive processes as transfers of domain relevant knowledge. Other authors (Mumford and Gustafson, 1988;Simonton, 1984) have also argued that the potential for creative performance increases with the levels of domain-relevant knowledge that someone possesses or has access to, while Obstfeld (2005) advocated that open networks are better at creating opportunities for generating new ideas.…”

“…In addition, the social media can boost creativity through the facilitation of human-to-human mass and personal interactions and communication (Hemsley and Mason, 2012). Secondly, studies examining the impact of social networks on creativity have focused on creativity and innovation outputs and not on identifying and explaining the factors and processes through which social networks influence creativity (Aubke, 2013). In addition, these studies have provided mixed results, because they have measured different innovation outputs by various methods (Hemphälä and Magnusson, 2012), such as patents, managers' performance, managers' innovation involvement and knowledge transfer.…”

“…Pirola-Merlo and Mann, 2004). However, by adopting a people-and/or organisational-focus, research in creativity has missed out the fact that the individuals' creativity performance is driven by the relations and networks in which they are embedded (Aubke, 2013). This omission is critical, since it is becoming recognised that creativity is not an individual process, but rather a social and communication process, whereby networks and interactions can significantly influence the emergence of ideas (Hemphälä and Magnusson, 2012).…”

“…This omission is critical, since it is becoming recognised that creativity is not an individual process, but rather a social and communication process, whereby networks and interactions can significantly influence the emergence of ideas (Hemphälä and Magnusson, 2012). Indeed, recent studies have emphasised the need to start studying the creativity generation processes by looking beyond the factors influencing the individual cognitive processes and by focusing on the factors influencing the accessibility to diverse knowledge in the work environment such as, the employees' social structures (Perry-Smith, 2006;Hemphälä and Magnusson, 2012) and their collaborative networking ties (Hargadon and Bechky, 2006;Baer, 2010;Aubke, 2013).…”