Book review: The uncertainty mindset: innovation insights from the frontiers of food by Vaughn Tan

In The Uncertainty Mindset: Innovation Insights from the Frontiers of Food, Vaughn Tan examines ‘the uncertainty mindset’ as a model for understanding how teams use uncertainty to organise for innovation, focusing on the world of high-end cuisine and the organisational design of elite culinary research and development teams. Reflecting on the book during the COVID-19 pandemic, Anna Nguyen welcomes this insightful restaurant ethnography’s rich prose that draws on abundant interviews, fieldwork and archival research, but questions whether novel approaches to scientific experimentation are the solution for a restaurant industry that is currently struggling to survive. The Uncertainty Mindset: Innovation Insights from the Frontiers of Food. Vaughn Tan. Columbia University Press. 2020.