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From El Bulli to SAPIENS
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From El Bulli to Sapiens
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What is Sapiens?
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Who has implemented Sapiens?
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I want to implement Sapiens
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Understanding to innovate
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With the support of
Sàpiens, el gran projecte d’El Bulli
Albert Adrià: “No pots assolir l’èxit sense patiment”
Els xefs del Disfrutar: “Som bullinians fins al moll de l’os, fins al final”
1. From El Bulli to Sapiens
1.1
Sapiens is born in El Bulli
On the 30th of July 2011, El Bulli, elected the best restaurant in the world for five consecutive times, served its last supper. Famous chefs from all over the world –all of them trained in the kitchen of Cala Montjoi– wanted to be with their master. "We closed El Bulli to reopen El Bulli", says today the chef from L'Hospitalet, who after the closure of the restaurant created the El Bulli Foundation. Adrià admits that it has not been understood yet why he closed the restaurant at the height of his career, and admits that the reasons were "seven or eight.” The most important: they had exceeded all limits.
"El Bulli was the seed of what Sapiens is today"
José Carlos Capel
Food critic
Seven years after closing the restaurant, Ferran Adrià returns with Sapiens, a methodology to help the world to innovate, the system that he started using at El Bulli and took him to the forefront of gastronomy. "I am impressed by the work he is doing and I have the feeling that this is again something huge,” says José Carlos Capel, a food critic who admits that El Bulli was the seed of Sapiens.
1.2
‘Bullinians’ to the core
"We are 'Bullinians' to the core,” says Eduard Xatruch, one of the three chefs of the restaurant Disfrutar and one of the creative souls of El Bulli. "We are believers,” says Ernest Laporte, Business Manager of the foundation, who did not hesitate following Ferran Adrià when the restaurant closed. On the 20th of November 2009, on a trip to Roses, Adrià decided that in two years he would close the restaurant to turn El Bulli into a foundation. The team’s hard core, after a deserved vacation, followed him. In the picture, the first team of the El Bulli Foundation, except Eugeni de Diego, who was in the kitchen of El Bulli from 2005 to 2011 and the Contents Director of the foundation afterwards.
Ferran Adrià
El Bulli 1983-2011
El Bulli Foundation 2011-present
Ferran Adrià arrived at the small restaurant in Alt Empordà by the hand of his friend Juli Soler, who later would also be a partner. Over time they became the owners of the place and he was in charge of revolutionizing cooking and the gastronomy industry with a totally disruptive project. He has been working for over 30 years with some of the people on his team: "If on a trip I was treated well, but my team weren’t, then we decided we all should leave."
Juli Soler
El Bulli 1981-2011
El Bulli Foundation 2011-2015
Juli Soler was the soul of El Bulli, where he arrived before Ferran Adrià, and, in fact, he was the one who signed him. "He was an exceptional maître d’; able to call a client to wish him a happy birthday", explains Marcel Planellas, professor of Strategy in Esade. He was named Honorary President of the foundation and he died in 2015.
Albert Adrià
El Bulli 1985-2008
El Bulli Foundation 2011-present
Albert Adrià is one of the board members of the foundation. When he was only 15 years old, he started working at El Bulli. If asked why he decided to devote himself to desserts, he responds quickly: "Because I am allergic to shellfish and because it was the 'independent republic of my house' farthest from Ferran". He currently runs six successful restaurants in Barcelona in the area of Paral·lel, called 'El Barri'.
Lluís García
El Bulli 1990-2011
El Bulli Foundation 2011-present
For 21 years he was 'maître' at El Bulli. Now he is the General Manager of the foundation and coordinates a book about coffee. From the year 2000 until its closing, he oversaw El Bulli reservations: "It was very frustrating and it meant working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The telephone lines rang nonstop when we opened them". Demand was never satisfied.
José Mari López
El Bulli 1991-2011
El Bulli Foundation 2011-present
José Mari López was the Purchasing Manager of El Bulli. He is currently the Press Officer of the foundation.
Lluís Biosca
El Bulli 1986-2011
El Bulli Foundation 2011-present
Lluís Biosca was 'maître' at El Bulli from 1986 to 2011. He is currently the Site Manager of El Bulli 1846, the new project at Cala Montjoi that will gather the essence of the creative workshop of El Bulli to do research and innovation in the field of gastronomy, always interacting with other disciplines. That figure, 1846, corresponds to the number of dishes that were created in El Bulli.
David López
El Bulli 2002-2011
El Bulli Foundation 2011-2017
At the restaurant he worked in the front-of-house and at the foundation he was responsible for new technologies. In 2017 he left the El Bulli Foundation to create his own company.
Ernest Laporte
El Bulli 1996-2011
El Bulli Foundation 2011-present
He used to go to El Bulli once a year with his grandparents and all their grandchildren. He had always wanted to work at El Bulli and he became responsible for its finances. Currently he is a board member and the Business Manager of the foundation, and Director of the Department of Financial Strategy. To him, Ferran Adrià is a reference both personally and professionally.
Eduard Xatruch
El Bulli 1998-2011
El Bulli Foundation 2011-2015
"Sapiens is the method we had in El Bulli to create. In the end, is about understanding to create", explains Xatruch in the small workshop that he and his partners have at the basement of the restaurant Disfrutar. He is one of the persons who better understands Ferran Adrià and adds: "We will be from El Bulli until the last day".
Oriol Castro
El Bulli 1996-2011
El Bulli Foundation 2011-2015
"Oriol is a creative animal," says Ferran Adrià. In 1996 the Adrià and Castro brothers began the activity at the workshop, dedicated to creativity and innovation. During the winter months, when the restaurant was closed, they focused on innovating and creating new dishes for the following year. "What we did at the workshop was to experiment, to question everything, to understand the product and its evolution from its origin to the end and, from there, to open new paths", he recalls excitedly.
David Seijas
El Bulli 2001-2011
El Bulli Foundation 2014-2015
Seijas served as a sommelier at El Bulli and later worked on contents at the foundation. He has currently gone back to work as a sommelier.
Fernando Martín
El Bulli 1995-2011
El Bulli Foundation 2011-present
‘El pixa’, as everyone knows him, worked as a dishwasher in El Bulli. He currently helps at the building site of El Bulli 1846 and setting up all the exhibitions that are organized about the phenomenon that the restaurant was.
Marc Cuspinera
El Bulli 1990-2011
El Bulli Foundation 2011-present
Marc Cuspinera is one of the most versatile people in Ferran Adrià’s team. He was part of El Bulli Carmen, the consulting and advisory branch of El Bulli, and was also in the kitchen making prototypes and always managing the huge archive that Ferran Adrià has been collecting for years. His are the silicone moulds used to present “elaborations” in the form of something else.
Mateu Casañas
El Bulli 1997-2011
El Bulli Foundation 2011-2015
Together with Oriol Castro and Eduard Xatruch, they were the head chefs of the restaurant. In 2011, after a well-deserved vacation, they accompanied Ferran Adrià at the beginning of the foundation with an exhaustive research on the gastronomic experience. After a while they decided to burn their fingers again near the stove and opened the restaurant Compartir (2012), in Cadaqués, and Disfrutar (2014), in Barcelona.
Ferran Centelles
El Bulli 1999-2011
El Bulli Foundation 2013-present
Ferran Centelles was one of the sommeliers of El Bulli, although sometimes he also worked as a waiter. He is currently responsible for the foundation's beverages section. Directly responsible for Bebidas. Definición, historia, tipos y composición (Drinks. Definition, history, types and composition), the first book of the foundation. Now he is writing a book about wine: "It is going to be an extensive piece of work, compiling the essential contents for a person who wants to devote himself to the world of wine in a restaurant".
1.3
From El Bulli to the foundation
"We closed El Bulli to open El Bulli," reads a neon sign at the entrance of La Bulligrafia, an industrial building on Barcelona's Mèxic Street that houses the prototype of what will be the future museum-archive of El Bulli Restaurant. In 1993 Ferran Adrià wrote his first book on cooking and found that he lacked many materials to document it. Then, he began a meticulous work to archive and document absolutely everything: diaries, notes on paper napkins, photographs, publications... For years he has kept everything in different locations and has now compiled it in a single site, but he is looking for a space to set up the museum.
"We wanted to make a Ferrari and we ended up making a transatlantic"
Ferran Adrià
Chef
The El Bulli Foundation is divided into two major projects. One is La Bulligrafia, the space in Barcelona that houses the materials that will shape the future El Bulli Museum. Here, some twenty people who are writing around ten books on gastronomy in the restaurant business cohabit among all these materials. The other project is El Bulli 1846, the future museum of innovation and creativity and research centre, which will be set at Cala Montjoi, where the restaurant was located.
A sculpture of a large bulldog, a gift from Escribà’s patisserie, welcomes La Bulligrafia. The family that owned the restaurant liked these dogs and that's why they called it El Bulli. Next to it, a showcase of plasticine moulds of various elements of the dishes. Due to its complexity, faithful reproductions could not be made with photographs.
A restaurant table, with printed chairs, is another of the highlights of the future museum- archive. Around them there are showcases full of dishes, cutlery and kitchen utensils that have been saved. Besides innovating with food, Adrià also wanted to innovate creating his own crockery and inventing instruments.
In another corner of La Bulligrafia there is a spectacular luminous panel with the 1,846 different “elaborations” that were created throughout the history of El Bulli. Next to it, hangers where the aprons that Adrià and his team used in the kitchen of the restaurant are piled up, and shelves with a huge newspaper library, which collects all his appearances in the press.
In another place, the most important magazine covers that Adrià has starred in, such as The New York Times Magazine or the magazine Time, are on display. Next, the awards for the best restaurant in the world of the magazine Restaurant and the Michelin Guide that gave El Bulli its third star, in addition to recognitions such as the 'honoris causa' doctorates.
In the same space, temporarily, work the twenty people who prepare the 'Bullipedia', the encyclopaedia of the gastronomy industry, and other books on this field, in addition to developing Sapiens and other projects of the foundation. They were up to around sixty, but most of them have already finished their work.
On another floor of the building there is a warehouse with the materials that this team has used in recent years to do this work. It keeps, for example, reproductions of containers and utensils related to food of several historical stages, among them the first knife, of the Neolithic. There is also a huge library with books and documents.
360º PICTURES
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2. What is Sapiens?
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What is SAPIENS
2. What is Sapiens?
2.1
What is it?
Sapiens is a methodology to understand and thus be able to innovate. "It's a very ambitious mission," says Israel Ruiz, Vice President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). "An apple dropping on an inventor’s head and him discovering gravity, this doesn’t happen anymore. When people talk about creative geniuses, they think they get up, get inspired and do something genius. But in the case of Ferran Adrià, it is about genius sought by method, and with Sapiens he tries to generalize it,” adds Ruiz.
According to neuroscientist David Bueno, the basis of Sapiens is the scientific method. Bueno stresses that "Picasso said that children are artists, and it is all about not stopping to be one", and adds that "in the preverbal stage, children apply the scientific method without knowing it: they pick up an object, they look at it, they touch it and until they have understood it, they won’t try to do something with it." For Bueno," one of the difficulties of the scientific method is to explain it so that someone who has not studied science can use it, and this is one of the great merits of this project.”
2.2
How is it implemented?
After the initial approach, which begins by defining the subject of study carefully, Sapiens is about studying a series of aspects of that topic, starting with the most elementary ones, such as the definitions. It's the same thing Adrià did in El Bulli to create new dishes: a deconstruction. "What they did in gastronomy was to study, at a very elementary level, the ingredients, processes and tools or equipment," recalls Israel Ruiz.
The Vice President of MIT adds that they first "documented it and understood it" and then tried "permutations with ingredients or techniques." This process of deconstructing something to try different ways of reconstructing it, to then be able to create something new, can be applied to any field. "First you must understand it, to create a system of permutations, and thus be able to invent,” summarizes Ruiz.
2.3
What is it based on?
Sapiens has been created based on the dialogue with professionals from many different disciplines. "The multidisciplinary approach is rare in Europe," says Israel Ruiz, who considers "an accident of statistics" that Adrià applied this way of working. Esade professor Marcel Planellas also sees it as exceptional: "There is a tendency to focus on trying to know a lot about a specific thing, but he had this global vision." Courage resides here, in the audacity of having this perspective. It is nearly Renaissance".
The multidisciplinary dialogue has an integrating and multiplying effect. "In science it is said that the great advances are made in borderline territories," says David Bueno. The type of research done at MIT, adds Israel Ruiz, can only be addressed in this way. "When there are very big problems, people from very different areas must talk," says Ruiz. The key to solving them, he adds, is "connecting the different areas". And when you work like that, he concludes, "the catalytic agents that connect the rest have the upper hand."
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3. Who has implemented Sapiens?
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From El Bulli to
Who has implemented
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Who has implemented SAPIENS
3. Who has implemented Sapiens?
Several companies from very different fields have applied Sapiens: Elisava Design School has created the Master in Creative Process; CaixaBank has created a guide for entrepreneurs; Telefónica has brought innovation to schools; the multinational company HP has sought to innovate in interior design, applying the creative audit within the framework of an educational challenge from Esade; and also the newspaper ARA, which is the first company that has applied the creative audit to itself, with the help of Esade professor Marcel Planellas.
3.1
Javier Peña
General Manager of Elisava
"We are applying Sapiens with the Master in Creative Process. We want to transform the way managers do and think, providing new methodologies, systematized in what Sapiens methodology clearly states: we need to know and organize all knowledge to work effectively."
3.2
Esther Vera
Editor of daily newspaper ARA
"We have applied Sapiens by putting ourselves through a creative audit with the aim of being able to innovate. With its conclusions, we have devised some specific projects, feasible, with a deadline and with the idea of trial and error. If they do not work, we exchange them for others."
3.3
Toni Segarra
Publicist
"We did some research to see why El Bulli had become El Bulli and how we could apply it to advertising. But we were not able to transfer their creative radicalism to the advertising agency. In the end, Sapiens is common sense and Ferran Adrià is an artist with a remarkable scientific spirit.”
3.4
Xavier Mas
Corporative Marketing Director of CaixaBank
“We have made a book, using the Sapiens methodology, for more than 20,000 clients, restaurateurs and people who want to start a business. The idea is that they can enjoy these documents in a well-structured way. The guide Mise en place is aimed at the restaurant industry, but the strategies can be applied to any business.”
3.5
Ester Sala
Marketing Director at HP
“At HP, when we want to enter new markets, we look for open innovation mechanisms. With Ferran Adrià, we put together a project to see how we could, through technology, innovate in interior design. The great value of Sapiens is that brings methodology to a creative process and is based on the fact of understanding the past in order to be able to extrapolate it into the future”.
3.6
Juan Cruz
Director of Institutional Relations of Fundación Telefónica
“Escuelas Creativas is a project of the Fundación Telefónica in collaboration with the El Bulli Foundation that aims to bring Sapiens methodology to education. Basically, what it means is, first, analyse where we come from. Second, sort out what we are and where we should lead it. And, third, starting there, be creative. Not only from the teaching team but from the entire educational community.”
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4. I want to implement Sapiens
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I want to implement SAPIENS
4. I want to implement Sapiens
In what field?
4.1
Education Learning
It can be used for
Develop the curriculum of a master's degree or a degree.
Doctoral theses, online masters and masterclasses.
Raising educational challenges, as in the case of Esade's 'Creativity for business innovation challenge'.
4.2
Company Organization
It can be used
As a creative meta-technique in any profession.
To improve the efficiency and management of an organization.
With the creative audit to evaluate the creative system of a company and innovate in the organization
4.3
Editorial Information
It allows
Structure the content of books.
Manage large volumes of information.
Sort the information and make audio-visual narrations or exhibitions.
If you want to implement Sapiens, you can leave your contact information clicking here
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1. From El Bulli to Sapiens
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From El Bulli to
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SAPIENS