Charlotte -
He was going against conventional wisdom and didn’t know any better. Or he just didn’t care much about conventional wisdom and its guardians.
Chef Dave Chang has marveled on his podcast at the audacity and serendipity of young people - like him 20 years ago - who go against the grain and produce real breakthroughs in their professions - sometimes by accident.
He certainly turned the restaurant business on its head in 2004 in opening Momofuku Noodle Bar in New York’s East Village at age 26. The name salutes Momofuku Ando, the Japanese-Taiwanese inventor of instant ramen.
Back then, Momofuku’s open kitchen, elevation of ramen into fine-dining consideration, late-night dining options, dashes of kitchen improv, and the fact that he was an Asian-American chef all tilted against firmly constructed windmills - and prejudices.
Truth is, it was only when Momofuku was about to fail that Chang fully threw caution to the wind and determined to serve dishes that he and his chef buddies loved. As a result, he discovered what many New Yorkers actually wanted to eat, too.
That was the inspiration he needed in opening his other eateries. Who knew delicious and highly regarded dining could include a Korean burrito concept that nobody appeared to need or want? There’s no question that older, establishment chefs rolled their eyes and shrugged their shoulders on that one. It all worked. The business exploded. Chef Dave Chang became a global sensation.
This story would sound familiar to the philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn. His landmark 1962 book, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” made popular the then-interesting and now-trite term “paradigm shift” that is nonetheless as relevant as ever.
Kuhn’s paradigm shifts - abrupt and epochal transformations that disrupted “normal” science - were often achieved by young people who took risks, resisted the status quo, didn’t know any better, had little to lose and who, as result, dared to innovate in ways that eluded their older, more established colleagues. After all, the establishment in physics, chemistry, medicine, engineering, social sciences, and music, too, has almost always been less interested in disrupting systems that earned them their professional status. Sinatra never, ever “got” The Beatles.
Digital Equipment’s Ken Olsen, inventor of the minicomputer, meet Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. It’s alleged that Olsen was once asked about the ever-shrinking size of computers, “Who the hell would want a computer on their desktop?” he supposedly asked. He was stuck in his paradigm, not seeing that Gates, Jobs, and others were about to do to him what he had done to IBM a generation earlier.
And let’s not discount the power of accidental discoveries, too - how about the mishap that allegedly led to Raytheon’s invention of the microwave oven? - as well as the palpable fear and reality of failure that all added fuel to the fires of creativity and innovation.
Chef Chang, meet Dr. Kuhn. The structure of revolution is often decidedly unstructured and sometimes just as messy as that Korean burrito. Just as delicious, too.
Image courtesy of resourcesforhistoryteachers.com