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10 amazing uses for biomimicry in business

2016 has been a long year, with exultant highs and despondent lows for sustainability-minded
professionals.

I write this in the dark hours of the longest night of the year, knowing each day grows
brighter from here. Its a time for new beginnings. In addition, although the snow presses
dense and cold upon us, we know masses of tiny seeds are ready to awaken.

As an evolutionary biologist and futurist, I take the long view. Species come and species go,
ecosystems change and disturbance brings opportunity. Wildfires trigger new growth and
reveal fertile soil. Falling trees open the canopy for new light to stream down to the forest
floor. Life is resilient, and natures ancient R&D labs have sculpted millions of successful
strategies for surviving against any odds.

You have probably heard of biomimicry the art and science of observing the living world,
distilling strategies that stand the test of time and applying these deep principles to our human
challenges.

Bumps on the leading edge of the humpback whales flippers minimize turbulence wind
turbine blades that mimic them are 60 percent more efficient. Water beads up and rolls off the
lotus leaf, cleaning dust from their surface. Lotus-San paint mimics this self-cleaning surface,
saving maintenance costs, labour, and energy, with no toxic cleansers. Natures 4-billion-
year-old R&D lab offers a bottomless treasure-trove of energy efficient, low toxic and time-
tested Innovations.

Biomimicry has become a widely recognized, comprehensive methodology for innovation in


industries as diverse as agriculture, architecture, manufacturing, transportation, healthcare,
software, materials and robotics. Arizona State Universitys new Biomimicry Center and the
Wyss Institute of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University set the pace,
bringing biologists together with experts in design, sustainability, business and engineering.

All around us, the Age of Information gives way to the Age of Biology as radically disruptive
ideas emerge from simple observation of the living world transformative, surprising, yet
somehow obvious. Nature-inspired solutions are everywhere, and we can expect them to
explode in the coming year. Here are the major bio-inspired trends as I see them.

1. Biophilia

Biophilia, which translates literally as "love of life," describes our innate emotional need for
outdoor spaces, greenery, living things and watery elements. Humans need these things, just
as all living creatures do.
Biophilic Design seeks to reconnect us with that nature, right where we live and work. The
reason is that natural aesthetics are no longer a luxury.

Consumers are far more likely to enter and explore areas containing greenery or water.
Patients recover faster from surgery and require less pain medication when they can see trees
out their window. Schools with nature have higher test scores, offices filled with plants and
natural light are more productive and communities with green-spaces know more of their
neighbours. Workplaces with natural elements save more than $3,000 per employee, making
biophilia an economic investment in customer satisfaction, employees health, well-being and
performance. We can expect to see Biophilia applied everywhere.

2. Living Buildings

Buildings such as Seattles Bullitt Center are striving to replace the ecological services the
predeveloped landscape once provided. In the past, half of Seattles rain would have
evaporated, to be recycled into the next rain. Today, only 17 percent of that precipitation is
reclaimed by the atmosphere.

Living Buildings (a concept championed by the Institute for the Living Future) seek to restore
functions such as this by mimicking the native environment. In pre-Seattles temperate
rainforest, for instance, layers of pine needles broke up the rain, atomizing it before it reached
the forest floor. Living Buildings here use planters on the sides of the buildings and mossy
absorbent skins to emulate this function.

In desert areas, Living Buildings might emulate the cooling and water-retention functions of
cacti and other drought-tolerant plants. We also see a trend toward Regenerative Cities (PDF)
moving beyond individual buildings toward built ecosystems, where shared resources help
realize greater efficiencies. With more extreme weather expected in cities worldwide, Living
Buildings and Regenerative Cities can supplement some of the ecological services weve
been missing.

3. Future of work

All companies and industries have an economic imperative to grow, but everyone other
than madmen and economists knows you cannot grow indefinitely on a finite planet.

It often feels as if we are just delaying the inevitable grow, but do not collapse today.

However, some ancient societies have persisted for hundreds of millions of years, making
more with each generation. Ants, termites, social wasps and honeybee colonies are survivors,
with proven ways of life that accomplish many of the same kinds of collaborative outcomes
we seek. Companies are looking hard at how superorganisms do business. These ancient
networked societies do not rely on a single leader, or a hierarchy of command. Their
decisions emerge from the bottom up, in flat and flexible biological networks.
Together, the colony is intelligent, agile, resilient and innovative everything we would like
our global organizations to be.

We can expect to see more companies looking to these ancient success stories for insight into
everything from self-management, collaborative teamwork and distributed leadership, to
collective intelligence and swarm creativity. (My book, "Teeming: How Superorganisms
Work to Build Infinite Wealth in a Finite World," talks more about this.)

4. Bio-security

All superorganism colonies are plagued by parasites that seek to profit from their hard work
by stealing it. Many parasites co-opt their hosts communication systems, mimicking their
scent to gain entry, or producing eggs that resemble their favourite seeds or the scent of their
larvae. Superorganisms must work constantly to protect their networks from deceptive
pheromones designed to manipulate them into serving others.

Similarly, fungal networks underground risk network takeovers from competing patches, and
viruses wage a constant arms race on the organisms they depend on for propagation. We can
expect to see more companies and governments mimicking these smart, highly responsive
systems for network security, testing identity and ensuring truth in media.

5. Machine learning and artificial intelligence

Mycelial fungus networks are even more ancient and successful than the social insects. This
half-billion-year-old pulsing nutrient superhighway is highly responsive to change, and may
represent a quarter of all terrestrial biomass. Researchers think of them as the planets
subterranean neural networks, and they have much to teach us about using and protecting our
own digital networks, including the Internet of Things. We'll start to see bio-inspired
intelligence systems in our everyday life: in energy, heating and driving.

6. Superorganism-inspired algorithms

Companies as diverse as Southwest Airlines, Unilever, FedEx, Hewlett-Packard and Capital


One use simple algorithms derived from ant colonies to improve their operations. Southwest
was able to cut freight transfer rates 80 percent at their busiest stations, reduce employee
workload 20 percent and board planes more efficiently.

Ant-inspired algorithms optimize everything from natural gas pipeline routes, air-
conditioning control in operating rooms, supply chain management, assembly line and
website design, search engines, digital storage solutions and information routing. Encycle
Inc.s wireless Swarm Logic energy management solution (based on the simple rules of
honeybee foraging) cuts electrical costs by 10 percent and reduces peak hour strain on the
grid. We will see far more of this, with RFID-tagged objects and GPS interacting with our
mobile devices to issue prompts.

7. Material science

Todays automotive and aerospace engineers seek stronger, lighter, more fuel-efficient
alternatives to traditional plastics, while the biomedical industries seek highly targeted
biologic drugs and biocompatible materials. The need for self-repairing, lightweight, strong
and life-friendly materials is strong across a wide swath of industry, and bio-inspired material
features are tantalizing.

Material scientists cannot get enough of natures materials from sea urchin spines to
abalone shell and spider silk, these complex hierarchical composites humble and inspire.
Labs across the country are seeking to understand and emulate the secrets of their assembly.

8. Biological manufacture

Many of natures structures and tissues are too complex, tiny or precise for human-scaled
technologies to produce. We are seeing new approaches to manufacture, assembly and design
as a result.

Additive manufacturing and 3D printing are our engineered entry point for biological
manufacture, although primitive in comparison to growing embryos and self-repairing bone.
Manufacturers are looking for renewable sources of AM materials, and studying living
models (from paper wasps to spider spinnerets and silkworms, tree resins and abalone repair)
for extruding them.

9. Carbon-negative manufacture

3D printers have reached the mainstream, but we have yet to find sustainable, scalable
feedstocks for building with them.

Biomimicry provides a powerful framework for thinking about this. Our printers easily can
be made to eat recycled plastic waste, but printing with reclaimed atmospheric CO2 emissions
(as the plants do) is a game-changing proposition with the power to reverse climate change if
we move quickly.

Newlight Technologies captures methane-based carbon from the air and turns it into
AirCarbon, a thermoplastic material that performs like petroleum-based plastic. Dell uses
AirCarbon as well, and Sprint turns it into iPhone cases. Petrochemical distributor Vinmar
International has committed to buying a billion pounds of AirCarbon every year for 20 years.
The opportunities here as vast and pressing.
10. Biologists for hire

Although Biomimicry is taking off as a versatile and powerful innovation tool, most R&D
labs lack a biologist on staff. Many are hiring outside Biomimicry consultants, but there is a
real need for biologists and naturalists who have a broad and intimate knowledge of a wide
range of evolutionary processes and lineages, and how form and function relate to the
environment, so we can know where to look for specific solutions.

I believe we will see a trend towards more "biologists-in-residence" in R&D labs, more
efforts to match biologists to engineering challenges, and greater opportunities for
Biomimicry consultants to work with corporate R&D and strategy.

We may despair against a rising tide of parts per million, and grow impatient when progress
strays from the straightest path. Nevertheless, life is not prone to linear trajectories or
foregone conclusions. It just moves to the next possibility, the next open door. As a Biomimic,
I know tens of millions of those doors are all around us. Biomimicry gives us compelling and
hopeful stories for innovation, efficiency and resilience. It presents a platform of hope and a
diverse array of concrete solutions to any challenge. All we need to do is look.

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