Imagine Innovation

If necessity is the mother of all inventions, imagination has to be the mother of all innovation right?

I couldn’t work on my innovation of Modern Scottish Cuisine without first imagining what it is first in my mind. Now as I progress through the products themselves, they do not inherently have to be anything like what I imagined but rather they take a form all of their own due to the progress of the innovation. The final product is an indirect result of the imagination while the prototypes were a direct result of the imagination process. And even though I will not use the prototypes, they were still a valuable part of the innovation process and should be regarded as such and not discarded.

It makes me think of how we are brought up in school where we are taught not to daydream and pay attention mimicking the lessons letter by letter or sum by some. But the daydreaming is the infant stages of my imagination. How can this be wrong? Especially if it is such an important part of what I am imagining to become reality.

When God created the earth, wouldn’t he first have thought of what it would be like?

You see I think in order to imagine you have to put aside what we are taught as children and allow our imaginations to run wild. In order for something to be done, it first has to be thought. Otherwise it will never be done nor thought of even getting started.

This process allows me to imagine no matter how I was taught to think as a child. If I listened and believed what most people would think of Scottish food I don’t think I could ever imagine otherwise. But I did. And as a result I have imagined a completely different belief in the foods I love so dearly. I also imagine changing the perception of a Scottish meal and by doing so, I have focused on my knowledge of cooking to help my imagination run wild with innovative ideas.

I find it important though to separate my knowledge from my imagination at the very early stages of innovation simply to help the innovation process by positioning thoughts without boundaries. This to me is incredibly important. Quite frankly I do not want the smallest of details to be restricted from its importance simply because commercial kitchens might not have a way of executing today. Well, what about tomorrow? It may be possible, yes?

Innovation to me is incredibly important to what I am doing. I use lots of examples by looking not just at food trends, which by the way are mostly never right when looking into a crystal ball and trying to predict the future, but I look at new cars, fashion, art and conversation. It is all relevant to the world around us. Social media, gadgets, apps and so on can all inspire me.

Food trends, in my opinion, fall into a broad variety of areas to include but not limited to the economy, inflation, status, buzz, reviews etc. If the economy and business is booming then of course high end steakhouses and expense reports will dictate the trend. Caviar, foie gras, truffles and the such will soar in popularity versus pizza, hot dogs and home baked cassaroles will soar during a bad economy.  Common sense really and especially when you consider ethnic food as a trend, hardly ever will you hear of Scottish food reigning supreme. But I want to change that and I hope you will join me.

About these ads