Biomimicry: Because Mother Nature Has Got Creativity and Resilience Nailed

Nature had a 4.5 billion year head start on us, so it just might be worth paying attention to her design principles

For the last couple of years I’ve had a growing interest in biomimicry, looking to nature to inspire the design of products or systems. Of those two, I’m far more interested in the systems aspect — how do we adopt and adapt nature’s principles to create social systems that are creative and resilient?

I’ve written up this list of biomimetic features that I believe will be valuable in creating a more peaceful and sustainable, yet still dynamic and innovative, world — or any subset of the world, like organisations, businesses, economies, communities, etc.

To create this list, I started with a list from an article in Wired Magazine, which in turn was distilled from the wisdom of Janine Benyus, Michael Braungart and William McDonough, Kevin Kelly, Steven Vogel, D’Arcy Thompson, Buckminster Fuller, Julian Vincent, and Dee Hock. Then I’ve added to it from my own reading of thinkers like Elinor Ostrom, Margaret Wheatley, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Riane Eisler, Bernard Lietaer, Frederic Laloux, Iain McGilchrist, Otto Scharmer and Stan McChrystal (the links are to past blog posts I’ve written about their work, and see also my post on the Shift in Consciousness).