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Nature as Inspiration for Business Innovation

Nature Inspired Design

What is Biomimicry? Simply put, it is emulating nature’s genius to solve human problems.

A leader in biomimicry is Janine Benyus. For years she has been inspiring innovators to learn from natural models to design sustainable products and processes.

Watch Janine speak about biomimicry on TED Talks
Read Janine’s book, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature

In her blog, The Living Enterprise, Adiel Gavish talks about using biomimicry to Create a Living Enterprise by integrating Nature’s sustainable design principles into its systems, products and services. Drawing on Janine Benyus’ work, Adiel makes a number of important points:

Secret to Thriving: If people take a closer look at the way in which the natural world makes and does things, they will discover the secrets to not only surviving, but thriving on this planet.

Innovative Design: Businesses can learn from and apply nature’s infinite reservoir of design knowledge to improve their systems, products and services.

Improving Business: By unlocking the secrets to nature’s success, businesses can not only improve their systems, but watch them adapt, grow and evolve like a living ecosystem or organism.

Below are amazing examples of biomimicry in action. The article, “The15 Coolest Cases of Biomimicry” gives details on these innovations and what in nature inspired it.

Velcro based on burrs
Passive Cooling based on tower-building termites
Gecko Tape based on the hairs on gecko lizards’ feet
Wind Turbine based on humpback whales’ flippers
Bionic Car based on a tropical fish shape
Friction-Reducing Coating based on shark skin

Do you have other examples of nature-inspired designs?

Cities Lead Sustainability Efforts

Let me comment on “Bloomberg Takes City Sustainability Program Global” that appeared in Transportation Nation.

Congress is unlikely to pass legislation addressing climate change any time soon. There is little political will to do so and there hasn’t been since the 1970s, when Congress passed comprehensive environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, etc.

By contrast, as described in this article, many city mayors are undertaking actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change. For example, they are encouraging more energy-efficient buildings, turning to “green” infrastructure to minimize storm runoff, etc. Ultimately, such initiatives saves the city and its citizens money and improves the quality of life.

I believe that any real action to address climate change is going to come from cities. For many people, global climate change is too vague. But people know all too well when extreme weather (which will occur more often due to climate change) causes floods that shut down their subways or causes heat-waves that trigger black-outs in their neighborhood. Furthermore, people and the local media can hold their city mayors and other politicians accountable. It would be politically foolish for local leaders not to listen to their constituents’ call for action.

As they say, “all politics is local”.