Interview with Tina Seelig, by Mike Krieger, January 2007

Tina Seelig has worn many hats—entrepreneur, designer, scientist, writer, and teacher—and is currently Executive Director of the Stanford Teaching Ventures Program. Her projects reflect this: children’s books that explore the space between chemistry and cooking; a startup that provides a creative outlet for those outside the publishing mainstream. Her multidisciplinary approach to life encourages us to de-compartmentalize our work and focus on complementing each other’s areas of expertise.

KRIEGER: You've written two books relating to food—The Epicurean Laboratory and Incredible Edible Science—but your background is as a scientist. How did you get involved in writing about food?

SEELIG: It's sort of a bizarre thing—my background is as a neurophysiologist, and I ended up writing books about the chemistry of cooking. It really came out of the fact that I love to cook, and I was a scientist. I knew in great depth what was going on in my lab at work, but I had no idea what was happening at home. But I was doing the same things here—I'm mixing, and measuring, and stirring, and heating—and yet I had no idea what underlying mechanisms were involved. I'm a strong believer in “you teach what you want to learn”, so I made a list of all the questions I had, and since I didn't find any answers, I decided to write a book about it.

The fascinating thing is that good cooking is all about experimenting. My mother thinks it's hysterical the way I cook, because I don't use any recipes. I'll use recipes for inspiration, but my feeling is that it's a big experiment. Just like a scientist is working on the frontier, so is a good cook, trying to come up with something that has never been done.

KRIEGER: How has understanding the process and underlying chemistry helped you approach and iterate on your creations in the kitchen?

SEELIG: I believe all learning is experiential—you have to feel it in your body to internalize it. When I was a student in neurophysiology, I could do the equations, as if they were recipes, but I never really understood them until I was in the lab with the oscilloscope and the electrodes in the cells, where I'm literally turning the knobs. Then I understood the equations, once I actually had the experience of watching the variables change.

The fun thing about understanding the chemistry of cooking is that I had many fewer disasters in the kitchen. You could say, “Oh, I probably shouldn't add the lemon to the milk, it's going to curdle." Or, "I probably should do this when I'm making an emulsion, because it will be more likely to stay together." And when I'm doing a recipe, I know what ingredients should go together—like a mechanical engineer, understanding the properties of the materials they're going to use. It's the same sort of thing—the properties of some of the materials we cook with are amazing. Eggs, for example, are incredible—they are one of the few elements in the kitchen that start out liquid, and you heat them and they turn solid. And knowing that, and understanding the underlying chemistry, you know they don't just turn to solids, but that the proteins are denaturing, and start to form a network, and if you keep cooking them, the network will squeeze out the water, and they'll get runny. If you know that, you know you just have to cook them the right amount of time to keep the right consistency.

Every meal is an experiment for me. I read recipes for inspiration and then improvise. If something doesn't come out, I just change the name. For example, a failed chocolate pudding would become chocolate sauce. I try to learn as much as I can from each experiment so that I don't repeat the same mistakes again—or to benefit from the unexpected surprises.

KRIEGER: It seems like cooking is a great way of getting children to think about chemistry.

SEELIG: Absolutely. I used to have dinner parties that I called “Super Science Suppers” where I would make a meal while giving a lecture about the science of the meal which I was preparing. It was like Carl Sagan meets Julia Child. I used to think I had a much harder job than either of them—Sagan was talking about billions and billions of stars, and Julia Child was talking about making a zabaione, but I was giving a lecture on protein chemistry while I was making zabaione. It was a kick—we would make a salad dressing while giving a lecture on emulsions, and then you get to eat it and go “wow! This is the result of what we just talked about”.

KRIEGER: And how have you carried this philosophy into your teaching on innovation and entrepreneurial thought?

SEELIG: I am very comfortable talking, but I think good teachers don't talk very much. They set up a situation and let students learn it on their own. I actually believe that all learning is experiential.

As a student, I took neurophysiology classes, which were very complicated to me. I could do the equations—as if they were recipes—but only really understood it when I was in the lab, with the oscilloscope and the electrodes in the cells, where I'm literally turning the knobs. And then I could say, “I get it! This equation describes what I just did.”

KRIEGER: When we talk about experience design, we talk about entry points, the user experience, and an exit experience. How does this parallel to our experience at a restaurant?

SEELIG: When you're at a restaurant, really what you're paying for is service. It's one of the reasons restaurants like to give large amounts of food, to get people to come back – because to them, the amount of food is irrelevant. To them, the other costs add up to so much more.

So, you're absolutely right—the experience is what you're getting. I was recently at a restaurant that just provided great service. It had been written up as having great service, but I thought, “Yeah, right. How different can it be?” But you felt as though you were in a fabulous hotel, where they anticipate everything. The staff was invisible—yet completely attentive. You walk out thinking that you absolutely would pay $250 for such an experience. Every person left with a little packaged goody bag for breakfast—so at home the next day you'd have a memory of the restaurant.

KRIEGER: It seems that if you substitute the word 'design experience' for 'dinner', you'd have a story told in many design classes. Could you tell us what led you to starting your newest startup, OpenFloodgate?

SEELIG: It stemmed out from my bookwriting—I started out as a scientist, got interested in the chemistry of cooking, wrote about it, and after got involved in writing a ton of books. My latest book was on the connection between entrepreneurship and neurophysiology—and I couldn't get it published. It was too business-y for science, and too scienc-y for business, and maybe it's not even a book, it's just an article. I though, gosh, I have something interesting to say here but no traditional outlet – and there are lots of other people with the same problem. So I started a company, OpenFloodgate, which is essentially opening the path to publication for everyone. People can publish stories, articles, poems, song lyrics, case studies. Like my experimentation with cooking, it's an experiment in the publishing world.

KRIEGER: You taught the d.school's Innovation and Design Thinking last year—are we all design thinkers in hiding?

SEELIG: Absolutely. I think people are just waiting for permission. I think that's why the program is so appealing. I think our educational system is just missing an opportunity. The way people want to learn is through doing, and design thinking is all about looking at the world through fresh eyes, creating value, leveraging resources, being able to fail, and it's very collaborative.

Design thinking and entrepreneurial thinking are very similar—they're both about looking at opportunities, identifying bigger problems and the bigger opportunities that come from that. The vocabulary for entrepreneurship comes from the business world, and design thinking comes from Mechanical Engineering and Product Design. We are often talking about the same thing but using different words—that's why it's so fun for me to go teach at the d.school, because I see the same things we're doing but framed in a different way.

KRIEGER: If we wanted to start being entrepreneurial tomorrow, what are some easy habits we can get into?

SEELIG: The first is observation—you might start by going somewhere you've never been before, putting yourself into somewhere new. And hopefully that will translate back into going into environments we're already in, and seeing those with fresh eyes. We walk around with blinders on, not seeing the opportunities we have right in front of us.

I recently ran a project for the Entrepreneurship Challenge, where each team got a pack of post-its. The value created in four days by each team was amazing. You don't need a lot of fancy tools—that's another thing I think about teaching, and why it's great in the kitchen. You can learn design thinking in a playground. My favorite teaching tools are paper and markers, and if I go all out, maybe tape and scissors. It's not about fancy tools, it's about a mindset that allows you to look at the world in a new way.

Copyright 2007 Ambidextrous Magazine, Inc.