Biomimicry

"[...] people are also starting to look to nature not just for technical assistance, but for system-wide strategic solutions. Whether it is working out the best strategy to deal with economic recessions or contemplating the best way to lay out a new town, problem solvers are looking to nature for deeper insights. And little wonder. Over millions of years nature has managed thousands of interrelated components and living systems that collaborate to deliver a sustainable and self-generating system that benefit all its members. It is the way that nature organises itself to deal with this complexity that is the key for a new way of thinking about our problems according to Tim Winton, the founder of Pattern Dynamics. “Biomimicry takes the tactics of nature to make actual physical mechanisms, but Pattern Dynamics uses the patterns in nature to develop high level principles that can be used to build generative strategies,” he said."

"Consider the common ant. Each one is by genetic design capable of only a few simple behaviors and binary choices, making it a pretty dumb, rigid, inflexible being. Yet the collective behavior of an ant colony is adaptive, flexible and even creative; it’s a highly structured social organization. Now consider your average human. Most of us are individually adaptive, flexible and very creative. Yet the large organizations in which we work are often inflexible and incapable of adaptation and true innovation. Why are ant colonies so much better than the sum of their parts, while governments and companies are so often much worse?"

"In nature, there are communities of organisms that interact with each other and the nonliving parts of their environment. That’s what an ecosystem is. Living organisms include plants, animals, bacteria, fungi, and more. We humans are part of the ecosystems we live in, but we don’t always contribute as much to the community as we could. Let’s look at ways some businesses have learned to start behaving more like cooperative members of nature. This story is about beer but can be applied to any business because it’s about how emulating an ecosystem can lead to less waste while supporting various industries."

"There’s an entire industry built around how to be a better leader and build strong, dynamic teams. But for the last few years, my colleague and dear friend Jane Fulton Suri and I have been looking to the earth and seas and sky for inspiration. A Partner, Chief Creative Officer, and a founding member of IDEO’s human-centered design practice, Jane believes that the natural world has much to teach us about cultivating the optimal conditions for creative teams. Together, with help from design biologist Tim McGee, we’ve come up with a few bio-inspired tips."

"From denial of service attacks to server crashes to day-long disruptions of Google Drive, almost all organizations are familiar with threats to their information security. Given that digital information is more central than ever, it's worrisome that the history of data security is littered with failure. Organizations seeking to be better prepared for and more resilient in response to information threats may want to draw on a far larger and older source of lessons on information security — the 3.5 billion year history of life. Tapping into biology's security database — which was developed by millions of species in response to extremely complex natural security problems — gives us first a wakeup call, then some practical guidance on how to keep our information secure."