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Two Harvard Business School teams have shared the first prize in a competition organized by Ferran Adria. The competition involved 31 business schools around the world who were all asked to look at the plans for The elBulli Foundation, set for completion in 2014, and offer their own insights, ideas and innovative ways to develop the project further.
The elBulli Foundation will be an extension of the elBulli philosophy and will provide a place for students, chefs, artists, designers and architects to come together and share ideas.
As Ferran told FDL recently: "The Foundation is a center of experimentation over the process and the efficiency of creativity, using the language of cuisine. The important thing is the creative process to get there. For example what is best, working at day or night? Here we will think about that and maybe one year decide to only work at night and explain the good and bad things of working like this.
"At the elBulli foundation the cuisine is the end product - what is important is what is in between. We want to ask if innovation can be for anybody - I think everybody can be creative and want to demonstrate this to the world."
The two teams from Harvard will each receive $10,000 prize money for their project ideas. A team from the London Business School took second prize for their project and will take home $3,000. The competition has taken over a year and seen Ferran present to 31 different business schools around the world.
Team A from the Harvard Business School put forward ideas for developing radical innovation processes and creative work including 3D technologies, ultraviolet light, bioluminescence and other innovative creative processes. Team Duende, also from Harvard, looked more at the business and organization structure of the foundation.
The elBulli foundation is a huge undertaking and a project that if achieved will leave a lasting elBulli legacy to the world. Built on all the old site of the restaurant the foundation will include an archive for people to see their work, a brainstorming room and an experimenting area for chefs.
The building for the foundation is being designed by the architect Enric Ruiz-Geli who has been brought in to help Ferran achieve his plans of a green, eco-friendly design that harnesses the natural environment rather than affecting it.
This competition is yet another part in the very long process of building The elBulli Foundation. With such a revolutionary idea, now the help of one of the best business schools in the world and Ferran's work on LaBullipedia, an online wiki-pedia style food site, it seems that those who cried at the closing of elBulli should have, like Ferran and his staff, been happy - Why? Simple because elBulli lives on in more ways than one.
