BIOMIMICRY:

Tool for Innovation at All Levels of Organization

The global climate is changing at an unprecedented rate. As governmental regulations and social values react,
businesses are also undergoing radical change to benefit as proponents of sustainable development. In searching
for clues on how to conduct business in a successful and socio-environmentally responsible way, we can look
to nature as a guide. Ecosystems can be seen as economies that have been, until recently, extremely prosperous.
Almost 4 billion years of research and development experience have left nature replete with examples of
successful survival methods. Acknowledging innovation as a critical part of success in the business world,
this paper introduces biomimicry as a framework for driving innovation for positive financial, social and
environmental change. The application of biomimicry for business is actually two undertakings: the first is to
learn various components of nature, such as the designs, systems, and processes of the natural world through
the sciences of biology, ecology, psychology and others; the second is to identify how these components of
nature contain solutions or innovations applicable to the organization. This paper will primarily explore how
biomimicry can inform the management of small and medium sized businesses (SME), although the ideas can
certainly be adapted to the management of nonprofits, larger firms, communities, and even one’s individual life.

© 2010 Strategic Sustainability Consulting

Zai Kang Chang
 Contents

BACKGROUND ................................................................................1
THE NEW BUSINESS CLIMATE ...........................................................3
WHAT IS BIOMIMICRY? ...................................................................4
BIOMIMICRY: PERSPECTIVES FOR INNOVATION ..................................6
BIOMIMICRY: METAPHOR GENERATION FOR BUSINESS.......................8
FIRST PRINCIPLES............................................................................10
Basic Physical Laws ............................................................................... 10
Basic Ecological Principles .................................................................... 11

BUSINESS APPLICATIONS OF BIOMIMICRY .........................................14

Natural Concept to Product Concept/Design: Interface, Inc ................ 14
Physical, Natural Design to Product Design: Shape Optimization......... 15
Natural Principle to Business Principle: Industrial Ecology ................... 16
Species Behavior to Management Principles: Collective Decision
Making .................................................................................................. 16
Ecosystem Principle to Business Principle: Creating a Community ...... 17
Natural Community Principle to Management Principle:
Reducing Intra-Staff Competition ......................................................... 18
Natural Principle to Management Strategy: Organization as an
Organism .............................................................................................. 19
Species Behavior to Management Strategy: Swarm Intelligence ......... 22

SUMMARY AND NOTES ON THE EXAMPLES ........................................24

LEARNING TO USE BIOMIMICRY .......................................................25
1. A Proactive Strategy is Prompted by Internal Desires within the
Company............................................................................................... 25
2. This Means Substantial Change ........................................................ 25
3. Leadership ........................................................................................ 26
4. Assess Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, And Threats ............ 26
5. Vision for How Biomimicry Can Add Value to Your Business ............ 27
6. Becoming a Learning Organization ................................................... 28
7. Common Knowledge of Ecology and First Principles ........................ 29
8. Feedback........................................................................................... 29

CONCLUSION ..................................................................................30
REFERENCES ...................................................................................32

ii
 Background
Currently, economies and business operate without
accurately valuing many of Earth’s complementary
services. These services, including recycling of
wastes, oxygen production, provision of fresh water,
maintaining soil quality and countless others, are
severely undervalued or, in some cases, not valued at
all. As populations grow and the resource appetite
of wealthy nations increases, we are seeing global
signs of environmental collapse and degradation. It
has become well understood that the processes we
perform to maintain our economies are interfering
with the natural world’s ability to provide these
services we utterly depend upon for survival. All
other species have, for hundreds of millions of years,
thrived on this planet without intergovernmental
agreements and protocols and have served primarily
to increase and diversify the versions of life on this
planet. What can our society learn from natural
society about existing and thriving in the long term?
The economy is a key driver of the direction of
society, therefore, those concerned with the long
term well-being of society desire a sustainable
economy, or one “that preserves and enhances
a well-functioning ecosystem; provides humans
with the products and services necessary for a
good and dignified life; provides opportunities for
fulfilling work and self-realization; achieves and
maintains economic justice; and utilizes resources
at a sustainable rate that does not deplete future
generations.”1 These goals cannot be met through
1 Milbrath, Lester W. 1989. Envisioning a sustainable
society: Learning our way out. New York: SUNY.
1
the industrial processes we currently undertake.
The basic flow of our industrial processes has
not significantly changed since the industrial
revolution—it is primarily a linear one, extracting
resources, producing products, and then relieving
unused wastes into the environment. The design
of future operations must evolve to be in line with
natural systems: we should not emit more carbon
than plants can absorb, we should not take more fish
than can reproduce and we should not dump more
materials than the local ecosystem can metabolize.
Society must not degrade the very natural systems it
depends upon to survive.
CEOs of many large companies are getting more
attention from the media as they increasingly fold
sustainability into their core business practices.
This is in order as positive reports show CEOs
are expecting to see increased customer retention
and attraction and a drop in operating costs.2 But
if half of the nonfarm gross domestic product
(GDP) is produced through firms that have fewer
than 20 employees3, it would be wrong to say
sustainable business development is alive and well
in businesses. Small businesses, defined by the U.S.
Small Business Association, are independent firms
with less than 500 employees. They account for
half of the electricity and natural gas consumed by
2 “2009 Greening of Corporate America.” McGraw-Hill
Construction. Web 20 Oct 2009. http://construction.com
3 The Small Business Economy for Data Year 2005. Rep.
The Small Business Administration, Dec. 2006. Web. 06 Oct.
2009. <http://www.sba.gov/advo/research/sb_econ2006.pdf>.
the commercial and industrial sectors.4 The crucial
advancement of sustainability in small business
will be hard-fought and to the immense benefit
of local communities, economies, and the global
environment. Regardless of the size of the business,
the impending large-scale environmental changes
will certainly change the entire business landscape.
The emerging problems in the business world and
society at large call for a new paradigm, one where
organizations “learn in harmony with the dynamics
of their milieu in order to co-evolve and create
value.”5

4 http://www.greenbiz.com/news/2008/02/18/big-impact-
greening-small-businesses?page=0%2C0
5 Laszlo, Kathia C. (2003) p. 605

2
 The New Business Climate

It is easy to see why big business has been blamed for Many proactive companies are merging their bottom
much of our present day environmental destruction line with the common good, and are moving towards
and climate change. This could explain why, in business practices that are more profitable and more
more recent times, companies such as Walmart, responsible. Many larger companies are instituting
a $400 billion dollar company, have been on the “green” policies, creating offices of sustainability, or
forefront of championing environmental and hiring consulting firms to make their steps towards
social issues. Proactive companies are realizing the sustainability. Surely, not all organizations can afford
principles that have brought about the current to take these measures, but all must incorporate the
state of environmental degradation are not relevant new ideas of sustainable development in some way to
anymore and create less advantage. The strategic survive in the changing business climate.
self-interest of businesses lies in being aware of facts,
Currently, figuring out how to adapt to and
trends, opportunities, and potential pitfalls that
incorporate these changes into a specific organization
affect future profits. Environmental degradation,
presents challenges for smaller organizations because
untenable resource extraction, and climate change
there are fewer relevant models of change. Then
are all facts of our new and emerging reality that
how do smaller organizations innovate towards
point to the need for large-scale change. Major
sustainable development, without hiring large
economic and social variables are changing and
consulting firms, creating a sustainability plan or
businesses cannot be sheltered from the effect these
instituting a new wing of the company? As we
forces will have on our economy. Those that want to
now begin to keenly ask how we should design our
survive will have to make key management decisions
products, businesses, and industries in a sustainable
to adapt to the new business climate: one that is
manner, we only have to look to nature for
more conscious of our intricate connections with
inspiration and this is the realm of biomimicry.
each other and with our planet. Andrew Winston,
best-selling author on green business, writes in Green
Recovery: Get Lean, Get Smart, and Emerge from the
Downturn on Top: “…Survival and sustainability are
truly not at odds. In fact, sustainability is at the very
core of survival. No company, or society, can last
unless it cares for all of its resources and capital—
human, financial, and environmental.”6

6 Winston, Andrew Green Recovery Get Lean, Get Smart,

and Emerge from the Downturn on Top Harvard Business
Press. p. 2.

3
 What is Biomimicry?

Biomimicry comes from the Greek bios, meaning innovation says, “You can’t imagine that someone
life and mimesis, means imitation. The idea of else may have a different perspective. But problems
drawing inspiration from nature most likely dates that are difficult in one domain may be trivial to
back as far as man began imitating things around solve from the perspective of a different domain.”8
him. A more recognizable form may be found in
Hundreds, if not thousands of innovations have come
Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex on the Flight of Birds in
about studying the habits of social creatures, change in
which da Vinci examined the flight of birds and then
plant species of forests, beaks of birds, skin of sharks,
proposed mechanical constructions to replicate the
leaves of plants, and other natural treasures.
flight behavior. More recently, the term has been
popularized by biological sciences writer and avatar
for biomimicry, Janine Benyus. She gives a three-
part definition of the word, but only the first will be
included here as it is the most applicable:

“Nature as model. Biomimicry is a new science that

studies nature’s models and then imitates or takes
inspiration from these designs and processes to solve
human problems…”7

Even within industries, different companies

face similar problems. Evaluating the similarity
between the problems of two companies will
reveal if a solution to one is a solution to the other.
Biomimicry expands the comparison base to include
the patterns of nature as well. Seen as an exercise
in pattern matching, companies must match the
situation causing the inefficiency with a similar
situation found in nature. Of course in nature, there
are only solutions to the inefficiencies, because the
“problems” are extinct. Bad adaptations or processes
are weeded out by natural selection and therefore do
not exist. This is a profound concept, apt for a time
Velcro was inspired by the hooking mechanisms found on
when information in the life sciences is becoming
seeds. Source: conservationreport.com/2008/12/
increasingly available. Karim Lakhani, an assistant
professor at Harvard Business School who studies 8 http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/140/made-to-
7 Benyus, Janine. (1997) p. i stick-stop-solving-your-problems.html
4
The principle behind self-healing plastics were inspired by our
own body’s ability to heal from wounds. Source: keone @ Flickr
Termite mounds must be kept at 86 degrees F, they manage
to do this within one degree while the outside air fluctuates
from 34 degrees F at night to 104 degrees F in the midst
of a scorching day. Architects have studied termite mounds
to inform the design of energy efficient buildings. The
Eastgate building uses 10% of the energy of conventional
buildings. Source: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/08/
biomimetic_buil_1.php
5
Solar cells are being developed that take notes from
photosynthesizing plants. Source: www.greenwavelength.com/
tag/biomimicry/
All around the world, the designs of nature are
modeled as physical design solutions to various
engineering problems. The metaphor of biomimicry,
in this way, can be taken quite literally. That is to
say, a designer can simply adapt the physical design
characteristics of an owl’s wings and employ them
in his own design for a wind turbine. Because every
piece in nature is a process that is conducive to life
and every species has the refined designs of billions
of years’ worth of evolution, there are not only a
large number of ‘solutions’ from which we can learn,
but also a wide variety of types of solutions we can
learn. Where the previous examples have adapted
the physical design specifications of nature, other
metaphors can be made between nature’s processes
and principles and those of our own.
 Biomimicry: Perspectives for
Innovation
A well-observed characteristic of the natural world is
its efficient use and re-use of existing resources. For
example, leaves falling from trees make homes for
smaller insects and animals and eventually degrade
into the soil to provide resources for future plant and
microbial growth. Eco-efficiency and complete re-use
are basic tenets of nature and should be models for
our own society. Replicating this idea on a smaller
scale, an organization does not necessarily require
outside resources to innovate towards sustainability
and can rely on its own human capital to generate
these types of ideas.
Designing for better innovation, leadership,
increased adaptability, relationships and
communications are all areas crucial to successful
business growth and are all areas in which nature
has a wealth of experience. With further study and
some creativity, the natural world can be a source of
inspiration for an unlimited number of ideas. Why
nature? Primarily because every system found in
nature is conducive to life.
Every species that exists today has gone through an
exhaustive Darwinian refinement by nature to be
an efficient, effective, and often beautiful example
of a way to survive. At the species level, and at the
broader, ecosystem level, there are repeated principles
that have proven to be conducive to persistence.
Biomimicry is a field of study undertaken to look
at the designs, processes, cycles, and mechanisms by
which other species have thrived and then adapts
these principles to our own products, processes and
even management strategies. Indeed, nature has
overcome serious design problems and accomplished
remarkable engineering feats9 while managing to
look great in the process. Learning how to capitalize
on the ideas found in nature is an invaluable tool. In
the information age of the 21st century, the idea and
the ability to profit from it are priceless resources.
Through biomimicry, organizations can avail
themselves to a new type of natural resource, one
completely renewable and free of emissions or
negative environmental effects—that resource is the
idea. Catherine Bragdon, of Biomimicry Guild’s
business development department points out,
“(With biomimicry), if you look at a tree, you’re not
cutting it down to build a building. You’re looking at
how it can move its food, water, and energy through
seven stories without any motors or mechanics, how
you can take that knowledge and use it to make a
better building.”10 By adapting nature’s time-tested
and conducive-to-life principles we can create
lean, effective, healthy, and efficient business and
industrial systems.
When we look for the principles and strategies of the
natural processes that permeate our world, Janine
Benyus, in her seminal work Biomimicry: Innovation
Inspired by Nature highlights the decades of work of
ecologists:11
9 Bhushan, Bharat. “Biomimietics: lessons from nature—an
overview.” Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society 367
(2009): 1445-1486.
10 Schoonmaker, Daniel. “Biomimicry: A Natural
Progression.” Grand Rapids Business Journal 23.15 (2005): 1.
Newsfactor. Web. 30 Oct. 2009. http://www.newsfactor.com/
story.xhtml?story_id=11000004JX7M.
11 Benyus, Janine M. Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by
Nature. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. Print. P. 7
6
Nature runs on sunlight.
Nature uses only the energy it needs.
Nature fits form to function.
Nature recycles everything.
Nature rewards cooperation.
Nature banks on diversity.
Nature demands local expertise.
Nature curbs excesses from within.
Nature taps the power of limits.

These overarching observations on a variety of scales

from the family of field mice to the Amazonian rain
forest are key principles nature continually employs
to maintain her elegance and balance. Biomimicry
for business is then, not a goal, but a means to
remain continually adaptive in the ever-changing
business climate—a source for new conceptual and
practical business applications.

7
 Biomimicry: Metaphor Generation
for Businesses
Metaphors have a profound influence on the business
world. The state of war is a metaphor used by
many corporate strategists and business writers to
explain the importance of strategy and seriousness
of competition. This metaphor typically evokes a
characterization of war devoid of a moral dimension.12
The way a person thinks about business shapes
the behavior and attitudes he or she has towards
fellow employees, competitors, customers, and the
surrounding community.13 Similarly, the way a CEO
perceives the role of the company then determines
the mission, strategies, structures, and processes used
to fulfill that perception. Unethical business decisions
can result in disastrous results for the company, and
even the economy, as we have seen in the case of
Countrywide Financial’s role in the 2008 economic
downturn. To the contrary, there exist metaphors for
businesses to be part of a cooperative community and
develop relationships that are not about undercutting
and profit maximizing. Employing the right
metaphors for the role of business at the outset is a
critical task of the leader.
Businesses also employ metaphors to inspire or
motivate in daily operations. Since the economic
downturn in 2008, there have been numerous
metaphors linking the company to a runner in the
race’s most difficult parts. They note, it is often in
the most difficult parts of a race in which the leaders
change positions. While this particular metaphor
12 MacFarlane, Bruce. “Re-Evaluating the Realist
Conception of War as a Business Metaphor.” Teaching Business
Ethics 3 (1999): 27-35. Web. 11 Nov. 2009.
13 Solomon, Robert C. 1999. A better way to think about
business: How personal integrity leads to corporate success.
New York: Oxford University Press
8
helps the reader understand the circumstances of
businesses in the downturn through the illustration
of a marathon, biomimicry introduces a set of
illustrations that are based in the wisdom of nature
and natural principles. It is a way to highlight
nature’s problem solving ability for the purpose
of adapting its solutions, either metaphorically
or physically to analogous human problems. Like
many of the examples in this paper suggest, nature
is extremely efficient in the use of resources. This
is because animals must hunt and risk their lives to
obtain food. Businesses can adopt this principle of
extreme resource efficiency as a basis for reducing
wasted resources that were once thought of as
fixed, necessary costs or never thought about at all.
Examples include: paying unnecessary disposal fees,
high utility costs, stalled inventory, overproduction,
unnecessary transportation, and over-processing.
However, drawing inspiration for more abstract
business applications will require an understanding
of the less tangible processes of nature and natural
principles that are not immediately visible. To
get a sense of how an environmentally restorative
system operates, Janine Benyus uses the illustration
of a Type 3 mature ecosystem, something like
a large mature forest or established prairie. In
this type of ecosystem many of the ecological
principles mentioned below are in full swing:
nutrients are being cycled over and over, all niches
are filled (a variety of species make good use of
the nutrients in the system), many cooperative
and complex relations are thriving, the system
continues to create more and more niches, and
the system itself enhances its location rather than
depletes it.14 Careful observation and study of a
flourishing ecosystem filled with plants and animals
also shows that it is fuelled completely by natural
sunlight and does not intake more resources than
it requires. The rest of nature has found ways to
exist sustainably, if our human societies, economies,
and businesses mimic the underlying designs and
processes of nature we will be many steps closer
towards sustainable development as our non-human
counterparts have found it.

By understanding nature’s principles, behaviors,

and processes, leaders can draw illustrations,
metaphors, and technical examples into the
business world. Biomimicry introduces metaphors
of interdependence and community that are
echoes of conscious capitalism and corporate social
responsibility.

The inspirational knowledge within nature is being

learned and made available on a large scale through
ecologists, animal biologists, and many others
in the life sciences. Learning the scientific “first
principles” of these ideas in nature will serve to lay a
foundation from which management can build the
biomimicry perspective. With a firm understanding
of nature’s inner workings, managers or others will
avail themselves to the vast inventory of successful
strategies contained in the natural world. Further
direction and discernment will choose an appropriate
idea to benefit the organization.

14 Gold, Jordan. “Bio-Capitalism a natural example.”

Corporate Knights Forestry Issue (2005): 42-43
9
 First Principles
Biomimicry as a discipline can be broken into two
processes: learning from nature and applying what
was learned. For an organization to benefit from
the biomimicry perspective, it is essential to gain
a fundamental understanding of ecology and basic
scientific principles. Indeed, as the managerial
applications of biomimicry will vary widely, the
method for developing the biomimicry perspective
will not. Much attention should be paid to the
following paragraphs, for these first principles govern
life as we know it in the natural world and form the
essential foundation necessary to comprehend how
the world is designed and operates. With a firm
understanding of natural systems, one is not limited
in the number of associations that can be made
between a successful natural solution and a successful
business solution.
BASIC PHYSICAL LAWS
MATTER AND ENERGY CANNOT BE CREATED OR
DESTROYED
All known forms of energy, on earth and in the
universe, exist in various forms including chemical,
heat, motion, light, and others. Energy of these
various forms is constantly changing from one to the
other. An example of this is when firewood is being
burned: the energy stored in the wood (from years of
gaining energy from sunlight) undergoes combustion
and releases that energy in the form of heat. During
the changing from one form to another, the First
Law of Thermodynamics states energy is neither
created nor destroyed during these transformations.
For our example, this means all the years of sunlight
that went into the wood transformed completely
into other forms of energy, primarily, heat.
10
Matter is similarly “conserved” during these
transformations because the number of atoms before
the transformation (in the firewood) is the same
as the number of atoms that remained after the
reaction (in the ash and smoke). Every material thing
we create can be thought of as a recombination of
atoms and molecules that have been on Earth for
billions of years. This means the material pollution
of our human activities also stay around with us, an
idea that brings us to the next point.
THE EARTH IS A SYSTEM CLOSED TO MATTER AND
OPEN TO ENERGY
To understand this second principle, think of a fossil
fuel, such as coal or oil. We know the carbon atoms
in fossil fuels are primarily from the carbon atoms
of decomposed bodies of prehistoric organic life
forms. By burning these fuels the carbon atoms again
redistribute, but in the form of carbon dioxide, a
pollutant and greenhouse gas. Unhealthy buildups of
chemicals results in pollution. Currently, the climate
change crisis is due to the surplus of carbon dioxide
and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Although plants require carbon dioxide to live, the
concentration is too great to be useful. We cannot
escape this principle, all human activities resulting in
material pollutant we reside along with us on Earth,
in one form or another.
Fossil fuels are combusted primarily for the resulting
heat energy. But fossil fuels do not inherently
contain energy; they are simply a form in which
energy is stored. The energy in fossil fuels was laid
down in prehistoric times from the bodies of plants,
animals, insects, etc. Plants stored the energy from
the sun, herbivores ate those plants to gain a portion
of their stored energy, and carnivores ate herbivores
to gain a portion of their stored energy. In fact, all
the energy found in fossil fuels can be linked to
energy from the sun from hundreds of millions of
years ago. As the fossil fuels are burned, they convert
that energy into heat. Some of the heat is captured
and ordered into a useful form of energy, but much
of it dissipates into the environment.
Energy from the sun is absorbed by living things such as plants
and nonliving things such as rocks. In the case of nonliving
things the heat is almost immediately radiated back out in the
form of heat (think of a parking lot on a summer day). In the
case of a plant, the energy is stored in the form of sugars and
is consumed by a herbivore. During the metabolic process of
the herbivore, heat is released out of the system. Source http://
sciencebitz.com/?page_id=12
To summarize, Earth is a system closed to matter
because the total volume of material on Earth stays
constant and it is open to energy because energy
comes from the sun and is eventually lost as heat.
ENERGY TENDS TO SPREAD OUT OR DISSIPATE
The second law of thermodynamics can be summed
up by the concept of entropy: energy in a closed
system tends to be less available to do work. Whereas
energy in the form of electricity is more ordered and
11
useful to do work, heat is more disordered and is
harder to collect to perform work. Any combustion
of a fossil fuel demonstrates both of these facts.
Stored energy in the fuel combusts to release heat
energy while the carbon molecules that once made
up the fuel disperse as carbon dioxide. Fossil fuel
technologies capture only a fraction of this heat to
make electricity; the remaining heat is released to the
environment and can be seen as wasted energy.
BASIC ECOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES
Ecology is the study of the interaction of organisms
with their environments. The field of study includes
the study of species population growth, competition/
relationships between species, feeding relationships,
and interactions with the physical environment on
a variety of scales. Although the field of study is
extremely wide-ranging the following paragraphs
will present several ecological principles thought
to be relevant to the scope of this paper. Readers
are encouraged to envision business management
equivalents to these concepts. Example analogues
include the company as an organism, genes as ideas,
and ecosystems as economies.
INTERCONNECTED, BALANCED FEEDBACK
SYSTEMS
Ecosystems are a complex web of relationships
involving a series of flows of matter and energy.
Basically, everything is connected to everything.
For example, if one were to take all butterflies out
of an ecosystem, there would be less pollination
occurring, which would result in less plant growth,
which in turn would affect the diversity of herbivores
attracted to those plants, etc. Inherent in this set
of relationships is the idea of feedback. Since every
bit of matter and energy is used so efficiently,
when something is off or missing, some species in
the ecosystem will notice. With a decreased hare
population there will be less food available for the
lynx population. The lynx population then decreases
proportionally due to this constraint, thereby scaling
back the resources required to fulfill the needs of
the population. Different conditions can make the
feedback less graceful. Suppose there is a population
of lynx and hare on an island. The lynx would
continue to eat, grow, reproduce, produce waste, die,
and so on at their hearts content. However, their rate
of growth is larger than the rate of growth of their
primary resource (the hare), eventually there will
be a large pack of lynx hunting for a small number
of hare (high intraspecific competition). Inevitably,
there is a crash in the lynx population and the hare
would slowly increase in number.
The lynx population is reacting to, or receiving information
from, the population of the hare. Source ccl.northwestern.edu/
papers/bio/long/
RESOURCE CYCLING
An atom in a fruit is consumed by a herbivore
roaming through the forest. The atom transfers to
some carnivore as it consumes the herbivore. Soon
enough the carnivore dies and is decomposing in a
field where the atom and parts of the animal become
nutrients in the soil for plants. This is an example
of nutrient cycling, but cycling occurs in nature on
many scales. In the water cycle, a molecule of water
will transpire from the leaf of a tree into the air. As
12
moisture builds in the sky, clouds form, resulting
in rainfall. Rain is absorbed into the soil and
subsequently absorbed by the tree for the process
to continue. Notice that in cycling, all materials
are re-used. No processing of a material results in
something that is unusable for the next step in the
process.
All materials are converted into forms that are usable for other
life-forms. Source: http://www.ljcreate.com/products/product.
asp?id=589&program=158&curr=1
The niche, a term adapted from ecology, is
frequently used in modern business language. A
species niche can be seen as the habitat and resource
consumption needs of the species. Species inhabiting
the same niche will result in either extinction of
one species, resource partitioning—one species will
be driven toward a slightly different niche thereby
avoiding competition, or a similar species may
differentiate as they co-evolve.
Competition can be broken down into intraspecific
competition and interspecific competition.
Intraspecific competition may be intense because it is
between individuals of the same species, thus within
the same niche. Interspecific competition occurs
between different species conflicting over a shared
resource.
Mutualism is a type of symbiosis relationship, or
living together between symbiont and host. The
relationship, involving two or more different species,
results in benefits for all parties. The Clownfish
scares away predators of its host, the sea anemone,
while the fish’s waste is thought to be absorbed as
nutrients. The sea anemone provides protection
for the fish by using its stinging capsules to capture
prey.15
Clownfish swim unaffected by the stinging capsules of the
anemone. Source: www.graphicshunt.com
Adaptation. Any heritable trait (capable of being
transmitted to the next generation), be it behavioral,
morphological or physiological, which aids survival
or reproduction in a particular environment is
an adaptation to that environment.16 Those best
adapted to the environment (at the time) are the
individuals that will survive, reproduce and pass
down the genetic traits that have enabled them to
survive. This process is called natural selection, or
“survival of the fittest”.
15 “Relationship protects from predators: clownfish,
anemones.” Ask Nature. The Biomimicry Institute. Web. 27
Oct. 2009. <www.asknature.org>.
16 Mackenzie, Aulay, Andy S. Ball, and Sonia R. Virdee.
Ecology. 2nd ed. Oxford: BIOS Scientific Ltd, 2001. Print.
13
Genetic variation. Genes are made up of DNA
molecules, which are the coded information
sets for building and operating the organism.
The small differentiations between the gene sets
of two individuals within a species, along with
environmental factors produce the physical and
behavioral differences one can observe. The gene
pool is the total set of genes present in a population.
If a gene produces a physical or behavioral difference
resulting in a survival advantage, the population’s
gene pool will, over time, begin to include more
individuals with that gene. Genetically diverse
species, or those with larger genetic variation are
better suited to adapt to changes in the environment.
Community and succession. A community is a
collection of species that occur in the same place and
time. It is a subset of an ecosystem. As communities
proceed through succession the species composition
changes. The complexity of communities increases
as succession progresses. The greatest diversity and
amount of nutrient cycling occurs during the mid-
successional period of a community.
Example of typical stages of ecosystem succession. Source:
www.tutorvista.com/.../lithosere.php
 Business Applications of
Biomimicry
A quick search of the term “biomimicry” will be
replete with thousands of inspiring and cutting-edge
examples primarily in the areas of product design
and materials engineering, but also include structural
optimization, chemical engineering, and desalination
techniques. All of the biomimetic inventions are
examples of the power of our human minds and
their ability to learn and adapt. By learning and
adapting what is already successful, we can quickly
gain an advantage that took eons to evolve naturally.
It is easy to see the vast potential for biomimicry as a
strategy to solve tactile, engineering-based problems,
but how far does this analogy of “nature as designer”
go? Does the analogy have solutions to our social
or more seemingly distinctly human activities such
as business management or product life cycles? The
examples will be presented with labels describing
the link between nature and business. For example,
the first case study is labeled, “Natural concept to
product concept/design,” this classifies the type of
relationship between the natural phenomenon and
the business application: a concept in nature inspired
the design and concept of a product.
The ecological metaphors will be applied liberally.
As the context and emphasis of the perspective
changes; the scope of the metaphor will adapt to
better illustrate the new perspective. The metaphor
for the organization as a organism in the food web
may enhance the perspective of the organization
as it relates with other organizations in its business
environment while viewing the organization as
a collection of individuals will be conducive to
exploring the intra-company relationships. Being
14
able to use the biomimicry metaphor on a variety
of scales and contexts will be crucial in developing
associations and solutions for the organization’s
specific desires.
NATURAL CONCEPT TO PRODUCT
CONCEPT/DESIGN: INTERFACE, INC.
Ray Anderson, Chairman of Interface, Inc., gathered
his design staff to go out into the forest one day. The
intention was to immerse his designers in nature so
they might come back inspired with a new design.
Interface produces modular floor coverings, or
carpets. This exercise is not the whim of a boutique
carpet producer but of the world’s largest maker of
modular carpets, a company valued at $1.3 billion.
What they found that day was this:”They came to
realize that no two things are alike—no two sticks,
no two stones, no two leaves,” said Interface, Inc.
Chairman Ray Anderson. “It’s total chaos, yet there’s
a pleasant orderliness in the chaos.”
This realization of the concept of chaos within
order—an idea that permeates nature—gave rise to
a line of carpet tiles, named Entropy. The dye on the
pieces of carpet was randomly placed to mimic the
chaos found in nature. This let the pieces be installed
in any direction while still maintaining the desired
overall look. By doing this, Interface also greatly
reduced installation time and production waste as
compared to more traditional tiles. Not only did it
cut down on Interface’s operating costs, the design
of the tiles hid any replaced tiles among the older
ones—this meant longer life for the flooring and
less inventory for suppliers. Entropy became the
company’s fastest bestseller, ever.
 to maintain under fatigue load. If we are to use less
material resources but maintain quality of structure,
we can look to nature that has designed structures that
adapt their shape to optimize the use of materials.17
Scientists have specifically looked at trees and bones
to study how they grow and adapt to weight loads,
both static and dynamic. Noticing that trees maximize
strength and minimize material by growing material
where it is needed, science has developed stronger
and lighter designs for structures. Designers at
DaimlerChrysler developed a concept car using these
principles of shape optimization to make a lighter
automobile with increased fuel efficiency.
The design of the carpet tiles allows for random placement
and easy re-placement. Source: www.designboom.com/
contemporary/biomimicry.html

This type of mimicry has taken a set of observations

about a natural setting, taken one cognizant step
further to be characterized as, “total chaos, yet
there’s a pleasant orderliness in the chaos”. This
summation of the set of observations then became
the conceptual inspiration for a line of products.
No precise measurements or testing were done to
The structure of the car optimizes strength and minimizes
determine the extent of disorder among the sticks material use resulting in a 30 percent lighter automobile.
and stones. The idea of disorder was associated Source: http://emergentarchitecture.com/about.php?id=1
with carpet design, which allowed Interface to use
mergeable dye lots and create individually unique
tiles that install non-directionally. The front-end
improvement in product design resulted in reduced
wastes and costs for Interface.

PHYSICAL, NATURAL DESIGN TO PRODUCT
DESIGN: SHAPE OPTIMIZATION
During the construction of a building, after the
foundation has been set, a frame is constructed. The
purpose of the frame is to give structure and carry
and distribute the load of the building. Similarly,
many machines rely on their designed structures
15
The shape is mimicked from the boxfish and is designed
to reduce drag. http://www.eartheasy.com/blog/2009/06/
biomimicry-why-the-world-is-full-of-intelligent-design/
17 Chen, J. L., and W. C. Tsai. “Shape Optimization by
Using Simulated Biological Growth Approaches.” American
Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics 31.11 (1993): 2143.
Web.
This type of biomimicry has been the treasure trove
of engineering and designers, that is, imitating or
employing the physical design specifications of a natural
structure or behavior. These types of mimicry can be
classified as physical, natural design to product design.
NATURAL PRINCIPLE TO BUSINESS
PRINCIPLE: INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY
Resource cycling is wonderfully displayed in an
industrial park in Kalundborg, Denmark. Six
companies: DONG ENERGY Asnæs Power
Station, the plasterboard factory Gyproc A/S, the
pharmaceutical plant Novo Nordisk A/S, the enzyme
producer Novozymes A/S, the oil refinery Statoil-
Hydro A/S, the recycling company RGS 90 A/S, as
well as the waste company Kara/Noveren I/S and
Kalundborg Municipality have set up operations in
close proximity with the intention of recycling each
other’s by-products, formerly known as “wastes”.
As can be seen in the figure below, for example, the
power station’s waste heat is being sent to warm the
fish in the fish farm while the residual steam is being
piped to Novo Nordisk.
A diagram of the industrial ecosystem of Kalundborg adapted
from http://en.symbiosis.dk/industrial-symbiosis.aspx
The residual products of the companies in the
16
system, which would normally be considered as
waste and a liability, have now become a valued
asset. Whereas in a more traditional industrial
system, one would see byproducts such as steam,
heat, and flyash being passed on to the environment
and becoming a liability. Effectively, the entire
system was designed specifically to have each
company fill a niche in the ecosystem. Existing as
a community to share resources exhibits a lower
impact than an individual company that would
obtain its resources “from scratch” and results in
improved financial performance. A fixed amount
of resources is being partitioned in an efficient
manner, while relationships with other companies
and the community fosters a mutually supportive
environment for all involved.
This concept of industrial ecology is perhaps the
most prominent example of a biomimetic process.
It is being promoted worldwide by The Journal of
Industrial Ecology and networks like Zero Emissions
Research and Initiatives (ZERI).
SPECIES BEHAVIOR TO MANAGEMENT
PRINCIPLES: COLLECTIVE DECISION
MAKING
Collective decisions made by social animals are
increasingly being recognized as very important
to their success. Scientists are studying the
communication behavior of bees because they
must work and thrive amongst thousands of other
bees of the colony. One of the decisions bees must
make as their colonies expand is that of choosing a
promising new hive location. The decision process
is surprisingly successful in choosing a suitable
location. The swarm blocks what sociologists call
“groupthink”—an obstacle to good decision making
that occurs when people copy one another. An
example of groupthink is when politicians vote
blindly along party lines, or when investors get swept
up into a buying craze without good reason. The
swarm is able to do this by first sending out scouts
to find suitable homes, which then return to “waggle
dance” the whereabouts and quality of the site.
The bees use the waggle dance among other dances and signals
to communicate a variety of messages. Source: blc.arizona.
edu/.../TuanBees/TuanBees.html
The key then is the “interplay of bees”, the
interdependence in communicating the whereabouts
of the best site and their independence in confirming
this information”.18 Simply put, the bees must
present their case and the other bees must see
for themselves, come back and waggle dance in
agreement. In making decisions collectively,
• The idea presenter must have an opportunity
to communicate the proposition accurately and
effectively.
• Stakeholders must then vet the idea individually.
18 “Decisions, decisions.” The Economist 390.8618 (2009):
89-90. Web. 30 Oct. 2009. p. 89.
17
• If the stakeholders agree, they are to actively
support the idea.
ECOSYSTEM PRINCIPLE TO BUSINESS
PRINCIPLE: CREATING A COMMUNITY
A fundamental idea in ecology is the cycling of matter.
Plants are eaten by herbivores, which are eaten by
carnivores, which die and become sustenance for
opportunistic feeders and decomposers. Matter in
all these stages, changes form and has value to the
organisms of the succeeding class. Companies, like
organisms in food webs, are part of an analogous
ecology. “It’s a jungle out there” is a commonly used
metaphor for the business environment. “Survival
of the fittest” is also used to describe the kill or be
killed nature of business. However, these metaphors
overemphasize the competitive aspects of business
while ignoring the critical role of cooperation.19 Each
company plays a different role in the web, and as
in the previous example, are beginning to see that
the waste they produce can have value for other
companies. This powerful concept allows companies
to turn around the cost of waste removal to create
sale profits while allowing another company to reuse
their “waste” material. However, many companies do
not have the opportunity to design an ecosystem as
happened in Kalundborg. In most cases, similar waste-
to-profit relationship opportunities exist, but they will
need to be identified and matched up to create an ad
hoc ecosystem.
The mission of the Chicago Waste to Profit Network
is to encourage transactions between byproduct
sellers and byproduct buyers. Although the
companies do not necessarily form a community
19 Laszlo, Kathia C. “THE EVOLUTION OF BUSINESS:
Learning, Innovation, And Sustainability in the Twenty-first
Century.” World Futures 59 (2003): 605-14. Web.
in proximity they are linked through the symbiotic
relationship of exchange.
A success story of this ad hoc ecosystem comes from
a bakery in Chicago. Waste grease was a byproduct
of the operations at Cloverhill bakery and a liability.
Through the Chicago Waste to Profit Network, the
bakery now sells the grease to an oil processor who
processes it into agricultural grade fuels, which in turn
is sold to local farmers. By taking the time to identify
a consumer of one of its end products, the bakery has
created revenue from selling 2,000 tons of oil while
creating cost savings in disposal and hauling fees.
The establishment of the concept of “waste to profit”
can become a great force to drive companies to design
their products and processes in a way that involves less
waste, that is to say, fewer end products that are not
valued by society. By shaping our processes to be more
“closed loop”, rather than linear, the organisms in our
industrial ecology begin to gain some of the material
and energy efficiencies modeled in our natural
ecology. Creating a market for a company’s wastes
can be seen as an exercise in networking, or forming
relationships with other companies whose resources
are your unwanted outputs.
This exercise may come as an unfamiliar challenge
because the idea is to not look laterally at competing,
peer companies but up and over to a completely
different “species” of company whose treasure is
your trash, or vice versa. Being nested in a complex
business community such as the Chicago Waste to
Profit Network will increase your chances of locating
a company to form this type of mutually beneficial
relationship. First, do a materials audit identify all
the inflows and outflows of your business to assess
which liabilities can become assets.
18
Business Allied to Recycle Through Exchange
and Reuse (BARTER) and Waste Exchanges
Directory are other resources for materials
exchange.
NATURAL COMMUNITY PRINCIPLE TO
MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLE: REDUCING
INTRA-STAFF COMPETITION
However specialized each role in the organization
may be, at some level there must be communication
and interaction among the members of the
organization. Employees of organizations with
greater interdisciplinary group work or less rigid
boundaries must allocate time to make these
interactions constructive. Because the number
of hours employees would like to spend at work
is limited, available time interacting with others
becomes a limited resource. In other words, there is
a limit to the amount of time available for working
with the group because of the need to preserve
time to complete individual obligations. Employees
compete for the time of other employees and for
their own time as well. As individuals, it may be
difficult or time consuming to institute a balance of
time devoted to the group and time devoted to one’s
own work, but not doing so can make employees
feel they are not in control of their time and less
productive. Managers can institute simple changes
in work practices to reduce the competition for
employees’ time. Professors of management, Lotte
Bailyn, Joyce K. Fletcher and Deborah Kolb note:
The firm restructured their daily activities into “quiet
times” and “interactive times”. “The results of the
experiment were remarkable. The team achieved an
on-time launch of the new product and received several
excellence awards for quality. On the personal side,
team members and their supervisor reported feeling
more in control of their own time, less stressed, and
less likely to take work and worries home with them at
night. They also found themselves thinking twice before
interrupting someone, even when it wasn’t quite time,
and found that the interactions they did have were more
productive and focused. Managers, trying to respect
quiet time, reduced the number of status reports they
requested and found that this made the engineers more,
not less, productive.20
This illustration allows managers to view the workplace
as an intricate and complex ecosystem where various
social, resource, temporal, and spatial constraints
affect the productivity, creativity, and efficiency of
the individuals and group. Small businesses have a
more informal organizational structure and flexible
managerial style and may be able to create small
shifts, such as these, to improve workplace dynamics.
Accounting for your resources and constraints is the
first step to using resources effectively.
NATURAL PRINCIPLE TO MANAGEMENT
STRATEGY: ORGANIZATION AS AN
ORGANISM
Traditional management may have an organization
set up similar to a machine, where each position
is specified to function in a limited manner. An
operator sets the organization and goals, makes
decisions, and maintains efficiency of the parts.
Employees are replaceable parts; required to
fulfill their role in the network for the goal of the
organization to be met. This organizational model
may have been effective in the past, however, when
circumstances are changing rapidly, these types of
organizations have difficulty adapting “because they
20 Laubacher, Robert, and Michael S. Scott Morton.
Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century. Ed. Thomas
W. Malone. Massachusetts Insitute of Technology, 2003. Print.
19
are designed to achieve predetermined goals; they are
not designed for innovation.”21
If we entertain the metaphor of the company as an
organism, it can be seen as an entity whose survival
rests upon its ability to use resources efficiently, escape
predation, and adapt to the changing environment.
Traditional management will have much to learn
from this metaphor in the ways of becoming more
knowledge-centric, diverse, and innovative.
FIND A NICHE
A creature thrives by existing in an environment
with no competitors and having ample, renewable
resources. Businesses, likewise, need a customer base
to subsist upon and require specific resources (ideas,
skill sets or supplies) to maintain that customer base.
The business model determines the metabolism of
the business by dictating the goods and services
produced and therefore the requisite inputs. In the
information economy, companies thrive based on
their ability to be the first to pioneer and profit from
the resources in the ideaspace. Innovation’s purpose
is to discover an untapped idea while a culture of
experimentation allows the organization to make
the move to inhabit that space to create advantage.
Curiously enough, this may not necessarily mean
companies should strive to create new knowledge.
The explosion of knowledge in many technological
and scientific fields in recent history makes novel
ways of aggregating and connecting information just
as important as the creation of new knowledge. It
will be easier for small businesses to develop ideas
on how to expand or jump to new market segments
because they have a better defined customer base and
more specific geographic market area.
21 Morgan, G., Images of Organization, Sage Publications,
Thousand Oaks, California, 1997, p. 28.
Small businesses tend to be able to pick their path
by being more independent and unencumbered by
corporate bureaucracy. By being free to make quick
decisions, small businesses are known for aggressively
seeking new opportunities and technologies. Many
products with small initial demand not suited for
mass production. Specialized niche markets would
not be available were it not for small business.
Small businesses have the opportunity to be attuned
to the specific bioregional space. They know
their customers, and have a deeper place in the
community as business owners and neighbors. Well-
functioning evolutionary systems are attuned to the
specific bioregional place. When ownership is too far
removed from local circumstances, decision-making
drifts dangerously away from the businesses optimal
level of evolutionary fitness.22
Innovation through learning, diversity, and rapid
evolution. Developing a culture of innovation
inherently depends on the ability of the business to
understand current circumstances, business realities
and project future situations. In other words, the
company must be supported by a foundation of
knowledge and a culture of learning. Cultures
of continuous learning are prime for continuous
adaptation and experimentation. As a manager,
how do you create a culture of experimentation
while protecting the bottom line? Scott Cook
founder of Intuit, the company that brought the
financial management program, Quicken, notes that
managers will have to diverge from the management
they were taught and:23
22 Poletti, Frank, and Ogilvy, Jay. “The Emergence of a
Sustainable Future: Brainstorming better ways to Globalize at
the Esalen Institute.” World Futures 59 (2003): 615-623
23 http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/hbr/hbreditors/2009/09/
how_do_innovators_think.html
20
• Enable collaboration by people with diverse
perspectives on a problem.
• Respect the fact that creativity thrives in
situations where there is slack and redundancy.
• Rethink job design and incentive systems in light
of what really motivates creativity: intellectual
challenge and public affirmation.
• Manage as though we expect creativity from
everyone—not just isolated “lone geniuses”.
Including internal and external stakeholders, from
customer to supplier, brings different perspectives
to the table. By placing the burden of innovation
on a wider group of stakeholders, it is possible to
obtain a more robust set of solutions and questions.
In nature, no one organism evolves, instead it takes a
species, a group to shape the future. The bad ideas go
by the wayside and the good ones persist, however, as
a manager it is impossible to have all the ideas or see
all the perspectives. It takes the perspective of those
constantly engaged in various parts of the business’
collectively produced experience to bring to light
inadequacies the manager would never have known.
Those who regularly experience interactions with
the company or its parts can be considered users.
William Riggs, visiting scholar at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology’s management school and
Eric von Hippel, professor of Engineering systems
and Management at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology posit, “Users generate functionally novel
innovations because they experience novel needs well
ahead of manufacturers…”24 Just as a diverse gene
pool allows for increased adaptability in species, a
diversified brain and experience pool is more likely
to arrive at a solution in a new way.
24 Riggs, William and Eric von Hippel (1994), “The Impact
of Scientific and Commercial Values on the Sources of Scientific
Instrument Innovation,” Research Policy 23 (July): 459-469.
Nature’s designs and processes did not emerge executives are bent on destroying the environment,
from a large set of genes. The genius of evolution cooking the books and lining their own pockets”25,
that we see today comes from the refinement of a corporations are beginning to look up and see that
series of mutations, in a form of trial and error over businesses are a part of the society and customers are
billions of years. Genetic diversity and its causes there voluntarily.
have allowed for all the successful behavioral and
By placing priorities away from making profits,
physical adaptation strategies we see today. Likewise,
companies can create a business of cooperation with
companies have the choice to evolve, but must do
those in their supply chain, customer base, and
so as quickly as the external circumstances change.
employees. Exploitation of any of these stakeholders
Those not matching internal capabilities with the
will ostracize the business and develop increasingly
new information environment do not evolve into
competitive and undercutting relationships.
more fit organizations and risk operating under
unsustainable goals or irrelevant premises. The
overbearing example of this would be the companies
failing to incorporate basic means of reducing their
environmental impact such as improving energy
efficiency and waste generation of operations.

The physical or outward expression of a genotype

is a phenotype. Companies must manifest the
innovations they believe will catapult them
into a profitable ideaspace. Whether this means
instituting an in-office waste reduction effort or
tying sustainability goals into the company’s mission
statement—companies must act upon knowledge to
shape themselves to succeed in the opportunities and
constraints of tomorrow’s business climate.
Small businesses are relatively resource poor,
making flexibility in creation of ideas and
innovation a major asset.
Realizing relationships. John Mackey, CEO at
Whole Foods has been spearheading the Conscious
Capitalism movement—a paradigm shift calling
companies to work for a higher set of responsibilities
and morals above profit maximization. At a time
when a “majority of the public…believes that
21
In more comprehensive business models the specific goals
are linked and mutually supportive. Source: http://www2.
wholefoodsmarket.com/blogs/jmackey/2006/11/09/
conscious-capitalism-creating-a-new-paradigm-for-business/
Start by communing with suppliers or those
upstream in the business. Establish trust and
come to agreement that profit seeking is not
the only motivation in the business agreement.
Relieving tension and promoting community with
these stakeholders will allow for further relaxed
interactions with customers and others who are
downstream of your business.
A conscious company realizes its employees depend
on them to provide meaningful work and fair
25 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E6
DD1131F93AA35751C1A9639C8B63
wages while it is dependent on quality resources the director of the Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Center
from suppliers “upstream.” Understand how the for Business Innovation in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
connections above, below, within, and across your Bonabeau and Meyer suggest a key may lie in their
organization affect your objectives. For example, a swarm intelligence; described as:
company must realize their employees are members
Social insect teamwork is largely self-organized,
of their family and members of the community with
coordinated primarily through the interactions of
other obligations. Demanding more time at work will
individual colony members. Together they can solve
infringe on the employees other time commitments
difficult problems even though each interaction might
and create stress—this will feed back into work
be very simple (one ant merely following the trail left by
performance, creativity and efficiency. The realization
another). The collective behavior that emerges from a group
of community and interdependence comes during
of social insects has been dubbed “swarm intelligence.”27
the greater realization of the effect companies on the
whole have had on each other, their customers and the Through millions of years of evolution, nature
environment and it is the duty of any business, just as has selected a set of rules for individual insects to
any citizen to uphold the welfare of the society. perform; culminating in flexible and robust collective
problem-solving abilities. Bonabeau and Meyer
Show members of the community your commitment
distill the lessons learned from years of research into
to fostering healthy products, healthy relationships
key advantages of swarm intelligence strategies:
and a health community. This may mean providing
• Flexibility: the group can quickly adapt to a
an excellent work environment, supporting local
changing environment
nonprofit organizations, charities, or engaging the
• Robustness: even when one or more individuals
community by attending local events, town hall
fail, the group can still perform its tasks
meetings and interest group meetings.
• Self-organization: the group needs relatively
SPECIES BEHAVIOR TO MANAGEMENT little supervision or top-down control
STRATEGY: SWARM INTELLIGENCE
Social insects such as ants and termites are among the
most prolific species on Earth. With little intelligence
and no imposed management, ants make up 15-20
percent of the total weight of all land animals on
Earth.26 How can businesses learn from these masters
of survival? Eric Bonabeau is one of the world’s
leading experts in complex systems and distributed
Biologist Anna Dornhaus colors ants to identify individuals
adaptive problem solving and Christopher Meyer is
and study behavior. Source: www.popsci.com
26 Schultz, Thomas R. “In search of ant ancestors.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 97.26 (2000): 27 Bonabeau, Eric, and Christopher Meyer. “Swarm
14028-4029. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Intelligence: A Whole New Way to Think About Business.”
Web. <http://www.pnas.org/content/97/26/14028.full. Harvard Business Review R0105G (2001): 106-14. Harvard
pdf+html>. Business Review. p. 108

22
How do managers develop rules similar to the ones
ingrained in social insects and reduce the need for
command-and-control? An example comes from Jim
Donehey, when he was CIO of Capital One. Donehey,
in an attempt to encourage individual efficiency with
a more hands-free management approach, applied a
set of simple rules to guide members of the IT staff to
work towards the same goal.
1. Always align IT activities with the business (that
is, keep the company’s overall goals in mind).
2. Use good economic judgment (spend the money
like it is your own).
3. Be flexible (do not box yourself into one thought
pattern).
4. Have empathy for others in the organization
(when people ask you to do something you do
notagree with, put yourself in their shoes).

To further encourage the rules, Donehey provided

gaming chips to the business managers with
instructions to pass them out to IT staffers whenever
they followed any of the four guidelines. Within
a year the group was more unified, empowered
to make decisions and work with little top-down
management. This resulted in an “attrition rate of
4 percent, compared with 20 percent for the IT
industry as a whole.”28

Small businesses may not require excessive

administration to start the ideas of swarm
intelligence. Excessive rule making may interfere
with the creative process.

28 Ibid., p. 111

23
 Summary and Notes on the
Examples
In these examples, we have seen different perspectives
on ways to approach product design, the value of
community, decision making, management strategies
that are sensitive to workplace ecosystem constraints,
the importance of niche finding, value of inclusive
perspective gathering, solution generation, and
experimentation. This is by no means an exhaustive
list, but an introduction to the possibilities of
biomimicry’s application. It is important to note the
disregard for scale in the application of some of these
metaphors. A concept with large governance, say the
natural principle of resource cycling, can be applied
to something as specific as a paper purchasing policy
for the department or the organization may pledge
to become a zero waste organization.
Attaining biomimicry’s potential rests on an ability
to appreciate the natural world. Surely, it is possible
to use a biomimetic principle to achieve an end that
is not conducive to life. But this is inherently an
unsustainable aim and inconsistent with survivability
in the long term. An oil company, for example, may
take inspiration from trees and their ability to pull
water out of the ground only to increase the rate of
extraction of oil. But this would be missing the deeper
and larger picture of biomimicry. The processes and
designs of nature are only effective and sustainable
because they adhere to the laws of other life-conducive
natural systems. To extract a singular idea from nature
and apply it out of context, that is, without regard for
environmental or social consequences is shortsighted
and an abuse to nature and humanity.
Industry best practices and biomimetic solutions
are not mutually exclusive. Approaching problems
24
using a natural analogy is just one way to arrive at an
appropriate solution. A careful study of management
science, for example, may end up coming to a similar
solution. The distinction between an idea that is
derived from nature and one that is an industry-
derived best practice may not always be clear. While
it can be argued that all innovations must be derived
from “nature” in one way or another the goal of
biomimics is not to claim every good idea as their
own, but to pragmatically approach nature and
learn from her vast treasures of knowledge, beauty,
and inspiration that is present in the world around
us. Biomimicry comes in the form of illustrations
or metaphors—such as the “organization as an
organism” example, in which case, it is the new
perspective that may shed beneficial insight for
the organization. Another form of biomimicry is
the application of a rigorously studied process or
behavior as in the example with the social insects.
As biomimicry is still an emerging discipline,
undoubtedly there are other types of lessons to be
learned from the natural world that are not yet
known. The life sciences that form the basis for
biomimicry are, of course, legitimate sciences, but
the means of linking these data to human processes
is just beginning and can be informal and cross-
disciplinary. We can call it an art of linking and
learning from disparate disciplines.
How organizations are able to take advantage
of biomimicry is only bounded by their
imagination and knowledge of the natural
world.
 Learning to Use Biomimicry
For businesses, biomimicry is a strategy for
innovation generation. In the generation process
itself, it allows the people involved to exercise
important skills for innovative thinking. Like
any other strategy it must be planned for and
implemented diligently. The following set of steps
is designed to help the organization produce a
work environment conducive to employing the
biomimicry metaphor. The reader will notice some
of the steps themselves are composed of metaphors
previously mentioned. The framework for change
is quite basic and partially borrows from the
framework for change provided in The Natural Step
for Business.29
A PROACTIVE STRATEGY IS PROMPTED BY
INTERNAL DESIRES WITHIN THE COMPANY
This starts with understanding the global pattern.
Become informed about why the existing paradigm
of business is ruining the biosphere and increasingly
separating the rich and the poor. Change in
understanding will give way to a change in attitude.
The case for climate change, unsustainable resource
extraction, and ecosystem destruction is undeniably
evident. Biomimicry is a means for a business to turn
the tide and take up our evolutionary imperative.
Present the case by linking the motivations of your
employees with the motivations for a new paradigm.
For example, negative health effects resulting from
poor environmental quality is something we can
all agree is something we would like to avoid.
29 Nattrass, Brian, Altomare, Mary 1999. The Natural
Step for Business. Wealth, Ecology, and the Evolutionary
Corporation. British Columbia: New Society Publishers.
25
100 percent conversion may not need to be the goal.
According to the ideas of Malcolm Gladwell, a New
York Times best selling author of pop sociology and
one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people,
only a “tipping point” needs to be reached for the
whole to come around. First try bouncing ideas off
employees to get a sense for how to approach an
implementation.
Half of the non-farm gross domestic product
(GDP) is produced through firms that have
fewer than 20 employees. Improving the way
small businesses operate will be significant
step towards making business in the US more
environmentally responsible.
THIS MEANS SUBSTANTIAL CHANGE
The ideologies of the traditionally managed
organization are ingrained and many people are
inherently afraid of the unknown. Change this by
making the goals concrete and the means clear.
Encourage thought exploration of basic company
goals by asking heretical questions such as “Can we
run our business with no waste?” The aim of asking
“What would nature do?” is a design question to
change the business from the ground up—it is not a
tangential pursuit or separate department.
Employees may feel comfortable with the status quo,
but continuous improvement requires continuous
learning and applying. Organizations may find
employees feel empowered by the fact that they are
able to influence the direction of the business. While
influencing people’s worldviews is a task requiring
tact and sensitivity, specific mental hurdles are easier
to overcome. A typical outdated misconception is
that all environmental practices cost a lot of money.
Prioritize those initiatives with the fastest payback
first to realize savings. Examples of these include
lighting retrofits, and energy efficient building
improvements to reduce heating and cooling costs.
Waste reduction strategies and increased recycling
can reduce waste hauling charges. These relatively
easy and quick changes will accrue savings that can
be turned over for projects with longer paybacks.
The operating environment of all business will
change substantially; those wishing to survive must
undergo substantial internal change to become more
flexible and transparent.
LEADERSHIP
Let go of the dominator model of social
organization. These models consist of a win-lose
paradigm involving rank, hierarchies of power and
control, and competition.30 If a group were traveling
the globe, the skills and knowledge of the sailor,
medic, mountaineer, and navigator become useful
in response to the situation at hand. Each member
has immense value and is, at different points in
time, called to influence the group. The web of
interconnections and dependence is larger and
stronger in this type of organization.
Emergent leaders seek the input of their constituents
to help shape the path of the organization while
realizing they cannot possibly micromanage for
results. In doing so, no one side dominates while
the other submits. Each possesses the power to have
their say and the potential of the team awakens.
30 Eisler, Riane 1987. The chalice and the blade: Our history,
our future. Cambridge: Harper & Row.
26
Emergent leaders realize the systems within the
employees’ heads, the organization as a whole,
and society at large are too complex to predict. By
putting their fingers on the pulse of the change in
the workplace, community or world, leaders can
create more contextually sensitive directives. A single
controller at the top of a hierarchy is an organization
unwieldy in an era of rapidly changing social desires
and resource constraints.
Get your employees excited to solve their own, the
company’s, and even the world’s environmental
challenges.31 Make sure they know their input is
necessary and appreciated. In the future, as talented
workers seek meaningful work, they will look to the
ethical and responsible thought leaders in the field
that provide experiences relevant to the evolving
marketplace.
ASSESS STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES,
OPPORTUNITIES AND THREATS
This is a standard point, applicable to any
implementation of strategy. A company must
know itself to understand potential outcomes of
changing its strategy. Without knowing the areas
in need of improvement, an organization cannot
realize its potential. Start off by conducting an
‘environmental audit’ to assess the material and
energy inflows and outflows of your organization.
Do not forget to include input from employees,
suppliers, and customers for qualitative information
such as employee assessments of the workspace,
management, work culture, quality of interaction
etc. After assessing inward characteristics, observe
outwards towards the strategy of peers and the
31 Winston, Andrew Green Recovery Get Lean, Get Smart,
and Emerge from the Downturn on Top Harvard Business
Press.
market at large. This will help identify market
segments to engage in and those to avoid.
VISION FOR HOW BIOMIMICRY CAN ADD
VALUE TO YOUR COMPANY
Develop a clear vision and translate it into a
meaningful mission statement or objective. How
can the organization improve its core competencies
through biomimicry? The consulting firm,
Biomimicry Guild translates Life’s Principles of...:
• Build from the bottom up.
• Self-assemble.
• Optimize rather than maximize.
• Use free energy.
• Cross-pollinate.
• Embrace diversity.
• Adapt and evolve.
• Use life-friendly materials and processes.
• Engage in symbiotic relationships.
• Enhance the bio-sphere.
...into valuable business returns32:
• Saving energy
• Cutting material costs
• Redefining and eliminating “Waste”
• Heightening existing product categories
• Defining new product categories and industries
• Driving revenue
• Brand building
These are the typical benefits of the lessons learned
from nature. Large companies like Nike, GE, and
Hewlett-Packard are beginning to realize these
benefits but unless you can afford services of cutting-
edge consulting services, it will be up to leaders in
the organization to set the vision. These corporations
32 http://www.biomimicryguild.com/guild_biomimicry.
html
27
can be thought of as learning the principles of
biomimicry and proceeding straight to the business
advantage this creates (See figure below). These
corporations may not find value in learning either
the first principles or in fundamentally changing
the nature of the organization by incorporating
biomimicry into the corporate DNA, that is, to
become a learning or evolutionary organization. If
this is the case, the learned biomimetics will be only
a single injection of innovation while approaching
from the left side of the diagram will allow
organization to continually discover and employ
principles of biomimicry.
Learning/
Evolutionary
Organization
(B)
First Principles/ Competitive
Need for Business Advantage/
Paradigm Shift Innovation
(A) (D)
Principles of
Biomimicry
(C)
For maximum benefit, businesses should choose the route from
A to B to C to D. As the business environment changes the
learning organization should adapt by employing appropriate
applications of biomimicry.
Merely acting upon the recommendations of
a consulting firm may not change the internal
functioning of a company compared to if the
company underwent the learning process themselves.
A separate set of benefits will accrue from
understanding the value of studying the life sciences,
becoming a learning organization and employing
the principles of biomimicry for innovation. These
benefits include those already discussed in the
leadership section but also include experiential
benefits and skills learned by employees. Associating
seemingly unrelated topics, ability to experiment
and questioning the status quo to open up the bigger
picture are important skills for innovative thinking33
and are developed during the act of employing
biomimicry. Gaining these skills is both empowering
to the employee and useful for any organization.
According to Nattrass and Altomare, authors of
The Natural Step for Business, rewards received
by companies engaged in sustainable business
practices include an increase in efficiency,
attraction of talent, innovation of new products
and services, development of knowledge base and
core competencies for the market of the future,
improvement of relations with local communities,
among others.34 Most importantly, small businesses
are in a better position to offer positions where
employees can derive meaning and value.
Increasingly talent is drawn towards businesses with
matching ideals and ethics.
Remember, biomimicry is not the ends but a means
towards known beneficial trends, identifying your
business’s role in the community, however it is
defined, will be critical in specifying your vision.
Create organizational or department goals and
objectives as realistic, definable and achievable steps
towards the vision.
33 http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/hbr/hbreditors/2009/09/
how_do_innovators_think.html
34 Nattrass, Brian, Altomare, Mary 1999. p. 192-198.
28
BECOMING A LEARNING ORGANIZATION
Just as human beings are constantly reacting
to new information, so too must companies be
sensitive to social trends, key relationships, and
internal threats. These types of knowledge have
always been important sources of competitive
advantage for most companies. However, create
an organization and climate of continual learning;
the management’s task is to establish conditions, or
design the workplace processes to create creativity
and synergy. World renowned management strategist
Peter Senge describes the learning organization in
the often quoted The Fifth Discipline as a place
where “people continually expand their capacity to
create the results they truly desire, where new and
expansive patterns of thinking are nurtures, where
collective aspiration is set free, and where people
are continually learning how to learn together”.35
Ideas must be encouraged, mistakes must be made
and lessons must be learned along the way. This is
especially important in times of rapid change. Each
person’s commitment and ability to learn must be
tapped for the entire organization to be adaptive
and productive. This shift in responsibility is a
relatively unpracticed and will require a significant
shift of mind among employees. Senge notes, it is
not enough for companies to know how to survive.
Learning organizations must learn how to enhance
their capacity to create, what he calls “generative
learning”.36 Having a diverse and independent
workgroup will mitigate the costs of mistakes made.
Incorporating all stakeholders in the idea farming
process will help you view your business from more
35 Senge, Peter 1993. The Fifth Discipline: The art and
practice of the learning organization. New York: Doubleday
Currency.
36 Ibid., p. 14
perspectives. It will be easier to see it as an organism, in offering training and advancement opportunities
depended on and dependent upon other organism in to workers.37 Although including employees in
the community. Taking these soft data and including innovative work practices may be informal and in-
them into the fabric of how you do business will require house, it offers novel and valuable work experience
a culture of innovation and experimentation. Please see
FEEDBACK
the resources on becoming a learning organization.
Ecosystems maintain their balance and elegance
Three types of knowledge necessary for through constant material and energy feedback
contemporary, evolutionary business must have systems. Imagine trying to manage a plot of Amazonian
to create value and innovate (Laszlo, 2003): rainforest with its dizzying number of plants, fruits,
soil conditions, and animals! But this is not the case;
1. Basic scientific management
the resiliency of this system is in its diversity, efficiency,
2. Knowledge outside of the enterprise, about and accurate communication of resource levels. A
industry, the market, consumers, etc. system with such interconnectedness, dependence and
communication requires less management, and relies
3. Sociocultural dynamics both within and
on self-regulating feedback to maintain balance. In
outside of the organization. Insight drawn
plots of a forest, taller plants shade out the understory,
from other sciences.
this sends a “signal” to smaller plants that there are is
insufficient sunlight here to prosper.
COMMON KNOWLEDGE OF ECOLOGY AND
FIRST PRINCIPLES In nature, there is no intent on the part of the tress
to send signals, but in the workplace these are the
Regardless of the position, everyone should be
types of feedback communications that must take
somewhat familiar with the role of business in
place to achieve a type of self-organization. As in the
producing wealth disparity, resource consumption,
case of the swarm intelligence, the signals must be
reduced well-being, biodiversity loss, water resource
simple and easily recognizable while the triggered
constraints, public health issues and climate change.
response must be equally simple and effective. In
From there it will be up to the leaders in the
effect, more nodes of regulation are being created
organization to propose biomimicry as an engine
and management is becoming more diffuse. At each
to diverge from the trend and innovate towards a
point an employee who is in touch with the situation
restorative business model. Spreading the ability to
will be able to proactively deal with complications
innovate through biomimicry releases the burden
before they snowball. Invariably, kinks in the road will
of innovation from a limited set of perspectives
need to be dealt with, but setting up a self-managing
and multiplies the possibilities with a larger set
organization will go a long way in reducing time spent
of perspectives. This allows all employees to feel
managing and free more time for leading.
they have more control in the direction of the
37 Scarborough, Norman M., and Thomas W. Zimmerer.
whole, while it increases the organization’s base of
Effective Small Business Management. 6th ed. Pearson
innovation generation. Small businesses are leaders
Education, 1999. Print.

29
 Conclusion

Mankind currently faces a wide assortment of global which are complex, holistic, interdependent and
development problems that include unsustainable often nonlinear. While organizations under more
energy production, life threatening water scarcity traditional management theory might regard
issues,38 inefficient and wasteful production responsibilities to the environment and society
processes, and corporate social irresponsibility. as irrelevant or economic burdens, innovative
Our eyes are only just being opened to the global organizations are discovering sources of competitive
intricacies we have muddled up. Both the scale advantage.
and the extent to which our systems have degraded
Smaller businesses employ much of the nation’s
the environment are unprecedented. These man-
workforce and provide valuable opportunities
made processes are inherently unsustainable when
for employee training. Advancements in socio-
considering there are limited Earth-bound resources.
environmental practices at the small business level
Continuing to ignore our dependency on these
would represent a significant advancement for
environmentally-based problems will prove to rob
sustainable development. Organizations with a less
the current and future generations of life, liberty,
formal hierarchy may be more adaptable to the
and the pursuit of happiness. If the mankind desires
management styles and ideas required to thrive in
to achieve a state of sustainability, a paradigm shift
the new business climate. Those companies able to
must occur in the goals and means of the businesses
grasp the relatedness in today’s flurry of knowledge
that make up our current economy.
will be the first to piece together sustainable systems.
Businesses are an integral force of change in the
All of the examples found in the paper can be
economic and environmental landscape and are in a
seen as an undertaking of design. As natural forces
position to lead the way to become more than just
designed the environment and all species, our study
sustainable. Many economic and environmental
of the world around us allows us access to successful,
incentives are in place to radically change the
underlying design tools to shape our economy and
pursuit of business, however, the design of our
companies. Companies that increase effectiveness,
industrial processes and business hierarchies are
reduce negative socio-environmental impact,
both examples of reductionist tendencies that tend
and create community will be the ones making
to inhibit change. Businesses employ a variety of
intelligent use of those tools.
personalities, skills sets and knowledge sets. To use
each employee as a cog in the machine, as traditional Biomimicry attempts to parallel the survival
and ongoing management suggests, is an unrealistic strategies of nature and the human survival strategy
approach to productivity. Traditional management and for businesses this can be an effective tool.
thought tries to maintain simple systems for those, At all scales of nature, from a simple leaf to a
bustling rainforest, we see principles, processes and
38 http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/cross-cutting_programs/ designs, which are conducive to survival. While
water/global_water_crisis.html
30
understanding the basic natural laws and basic
ecological principles is more or less straightforward
changing the business model to imitate nature and
operate in harmony with natural laws is profoundly
complex because it necessitates a rethinking or
redesigning of many foundational assumptions. The
act of employing nature’s design requires a humility
that was lost in our industrial age. Biomimicry is
a demonstration of the awareness that we too are
bound by ecological constraints. Just as nature
flourishes within these constraints, the evolved
business will find a wealth of ideas to bring success
in a responsible and respectable manner.

31
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