Wishing upon a star: how apprentice-master similarity, status and career stage affect critics’ evaluations of former apprentices in the haute cuisine industry

This article explores how the similarity between a master’s and former apprentice’s products influences critics’ evaluations of creative professionals’ work. Through apprenticeships with well-known masters, creative professionals manage the competing demands for novelty and familiarity typical of creative industries and find their optimal balance. To gain positive evaluations, creative workers must demonstrate their offerings’ comparability with their former master’s, yet some degrees of novelty. An analysis of international haute cuisine chefs reveals an inverted U-shaped relationship between similarity of apprentice’s and master’s products, and critics’ evaluations. Furthermore, the analysis shows that apprenticeships with high-status masters and those that occur late in the apprentice’s career change this inverted U-shaped relationship into a positive one. The article concludes by highlighting the consequences of being a mainstream or a maverick with respect to the master in the creative industry and by discussing possible strategies for creative professionals to gain critics’ recognition.