An Individual Business Model in the Making: a Chef’s Quest for
Creative Freedom
Purpose of this article
to hold to this individual perspective and show the triggers, mechanisms and defining changes
in its evolution
Main idea of this article:
● Two different cycles lead to business model transformation in individual business
1. initiated by triggers - involves change mechanisms leading to business model trans-
formation (substantial changes in scope and resources, and in form of organizing)
2. adjustments in the business model driven by the value captured (e.g., the way activities
are organized can be changed or external resources brought in to increase revenues or
enhance reputation and com- petency) that do not involve modification of interests and
motivations
this article contributes to the business study in three different ways
● Business model's usefulness and importance when it extended to the individual level
● Shedding light on the dynamics on the individual business model: organization can help
individuals pursuing goals by identifying the kinds of changes in the model, and triggers
associated with those changes.
● Distinguishing between value creation, value appropriation and sharing mechanisms,
and value slippage
'how individuals e entrepreneurs, professionals, scientists, artists e shape and transform their
‘individual’ business models to pursue specific interests?'
Key terminologies
Business model
‘the content, structure, and governance of transactions designed so as to create value through
the exploitation of business opportunities
● depicted as organizational devices that reveal a company’s logic for creating and
capturing value, and also its approach to constant renewal
Three functions
1. Reveals the logic for creating and capturing value
2. Reveals the organization's approach to renewal
3. Enhances the understanding of an organization's operations
individual business models
sets of activities, organizing, and stra- tegic resources that individuals employ to pursue their
interests and motivations, and to create and capture value in the process.
,=Triggers (quests): Why
● motivations and interests that sparked off business model changes
● drive the business model dynamics
● Major trigger (overarching interests and motivations): Adria's ongoing quest for creative
freedom
○ Three Stage-specific triggers (changes as individual's career advances)
■ Quest for authenticity (period 1 to 2)
■ leading to the introduction of the creativity that paved the way
towards the creation of Adria`’s individual style.
■ Quest for recognition (period 2 to 3)
■ resulting in the chef’s need to ‘explain’ his distinctive culinary style
‘by setting its philosophy down in writing.’
■ made it easier to recognize the chef and his team’s
contribution.
■ Quest for influence (period 3 to 4)
■ when he introduced changes to allow him to push the limits of
cuisine, connecting it to science, art and society.
=Mechanism: How
● How the transformations were achieved
● The main change mechanism was creative response.
Change mechanism: Change the business model’s elements,
● transformation in activities, organizing, and strategic resources, and value mechanisms,
related to the creation, capture and sharing of value.
○ Coherence
■ comes from a well-integrated core team that provides continuity,
accumulation of knowledge and experience, and shared values
○ Novelty
■ provided from a periphery of diverse interns and other collaborators
selected from around the globe, who change from year to year and bring
in new approaches and ideas.
○ Creative response: internal drive
■ to think ‘outside-the-box’, changing social and economic situations and
shaping long-run outcomes
○ Alertness : externally oriented
■ alert awareness of already occurred changes in consumer preferences, in
the availability of already-in-use resources .. [the] a sense of what might
be ‘‘around the corner
○ Intent : combined internal-external drive
■ concerning leaders’ ambitions to undertake changes (maybe far) beyond
their available resources and capabilities, and about providing
consistency to short-term action, while allowing for reinterpretation when
new opportunities appear.
, Value mechanism : affect the value that it captures
● Everything with values
○ values created (staretgic resources, investment in the imitation..)
■ adding value for the customer as well as for such other targets as
business owners, other stakeholders, employees and society in
■ Value can be created by leveraging strategic resources, as well as by
investing in assets that appreciate because of innovation
■ Novelty seeking
■ discovery of new concepts and techniques that open up pathways
for further culinary innovation.
■ Resource leverage
■ E.g. demanding task of creating a 100% new restaurant menu for
the each season, as well as in developing new commercial
products for other companies and new ideas for society as a
whole.
○ (value appropriation) : individual or firm manages to retain part of the value it
creates as profit
○ Value captured (monetizing values created,)
■ Transforming the value he creates into revenue streams and asset
appreciatiion
■ E.g. book publishing, which allows Adria` to claim ‘ownership’ of his new
ideas and earn revenues from their written descrip- tion.
○ Value sharing
■ Added value appropriation by third parties
■ Cocreation of value with third parties
■ allow collaborating parties to appropriate - legitimately - part of the value
created by joint efforts
○ unintended and endorsed value slippage (values slips to the third parties)
■ Value created by the entrepreneur slips to third parties
■ Third parties are able to monetize ideas
■ occurs when the value creator is unable to capture or retain their ‘proper’
share because some has been ‘siphoned off’ by (usually) an unauthorized
external party
■ E.g. copying cocnepts and techniques
Revenue: have different forms and originate from different activities, and may depend on the
ownership of intellectual or other property, as well as on the other two types of value.
Reputation value : increases in the individual’s brand equity, and again may take different
forms, from recognition within the profession to a more universal renow
