I have decided to setup a blog so that I can exchange ideas and advice on starting a business with an online presence. I want to interact with many creative business professionals and hope to be able to reciprocate their generosity.
ALR
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I was quite fortunate to have met a Music Therapist on the train home last night. This Music Therapist works for Beth Israel Medical Center. I walked away from my encounter with this wonderful person thinking about alternate methods of containing water vs. using the plastic bottles we have to deal with right now. I thank this person for the energy and inspiration I was given during our time together.
Here is something I copied from biomimicry.net.
Biomimicry as a Practical Innovation Process
Innovators from all walks of life--engineers, managers, designers, business leaders and more--can use biomimicry as a tool to create more sustainable designs. The Biomimicry process of consulting life’s genius, described in the Design Spiral, can serve as a guide to help innovators use biomimicry to biologize a challenge, query the natural world for inspiration, then evaluate to ensure that the final design mimics nature at all levels—form, process, and ecosystem.
Our methodology brings nature’s wisdom not just to the physical design, but also to the manufacturing process, the packaging, and all the way through to shipping, distribution, and take-back decisions. . We use a spiral to emphasize the reiterative nature of the process—that is, after solving one challenge, then evaluating how well it meets life’s principles, another challenge often arises, and the design process begins anew. For instance, an innovator might design a wind turbine that mimics life’s streamlining principles, but then ask how will it be manufactured? Will the energy use and chemical processing mimic nature too? It can, with another cycle through the design method.
The Design Spiral
Our thanks to Carl Hastrich, who brought a designer’s sensibility to the process that Janine Benyus and Dayna Baumeister use to teach and practice biomimicry. He suggested they represent the process in a spiral that would be visually understandable to designers. Carl is currently teaching this process with an Architect at the Ontario College of Art and Design, whilst working with the Biomimicry Guild on implementing the process on real world challenges and consulting.
Identify
Develop a Design Brief of the Human need:
Deconstruct the Problem:
* Develop a Design Brief with specifics about the problem to be resolved.
* Break down the Design Brief to the core of the problems and the design specifications
* What do you want your Design to do? (not “what do you want to design?”)
* Continue to ask why until you get to the bottom of the problem.
* Define the specifics of the problem:
* Target Market; who is involved with the problem and who will be involved with the solution?
* Location: where is the problem, where will the solution be applied?
Translate
Biologize the question; ask the Design Brief from Nature's perspective:
Identify Functions:
How does Nature do this?
How does Nature NOT do this?
Reframe Questions with additional key words.
Define the Habitat/Location
Climate conditions
Nutrient conditions
Social conditions
Temporal conditions
Collate the questions so that they can be asked as:
How does Nature achieve this function in this environment?
observe
Look for the champions in nature who answer/resolve your challenges
Find the best Natural Models to answer your questions:
Consider Literal and Metaphorical
Find champion adapters by asking “whose survival depends on this?”
Find organisms that are most challenged by the problem you are trying to solve, but are unfazed by it.
Look to the extremes of the habitat:
Turn the problem inside out and on its head:
Open discussions with Biologists and specialists in the field
abstract
Find the repeating patterns and processes within nature that achieve success
Create taxonomy of life’s strategies:
Select the champions with the most relevant strategies to your particular design challenge.
Abstract from this list the repeating successes and principles that achieve this success.
apply
Develop ideas and solutions based on the natural models
Develop concepts and ideas that apply the lessons from your Natural teachers.
Look into applying these lessons as deep as possible in your designs:
Mimicking Form:
* Find out details of the morphology
* Understand scale effects
* Consider influencing factors on the effectiveness of the form for the organism
* Consider ways in which you might deepen the conversation to also mimic process and/or ecosystem
Mimicking Function:
* ind out details of the biological process
* Understand scale effects
* Consider influencing factors on the effectiveness of the process for the organism
* Consider ways in which you might deepen the conversation to also mimic the ecosystem
Mimicking Ecosystem:
* Find out details of the biological process
* Understand scale effects
* Consider influencing factors on the effectiveness of the process for the organism
evaluate
How do your ideas compare to the successful principles of nature?
Life builds from the bottom-up
- modular
- built to shape (no waste)
- self-assembly (natural affinities)
Life fits form to function
- shape is cheaper than material
- optimizes rather than maximizes
- multi-functionality
Life is cyclic (processes) and recycles (material resources)
Life is locally attuned and resourceful
- uses free energy (e.g. sunlight)
- abundant materials
- detects feedback
Life adapts and evolves
- appropriate behavior (learning, imitation)
- cross-pollinates and mutates
- embraces diversity and redundancy
Life creates conditions conducive to life
- life-friendly materials
- benign manufacturing
- water as solvent
- bio-sphere enhancing
Life coexists with a cooperative framework
- interconnected and interdependent
Take appropriate questions from above and continue to question your solution.
Identify further ways to improve your design and develop new questions to explore
Questions may now be about the refinement of the concept:
Packaging, Manufacture, Marketing, Transport
New Products - additions, refinements
Etc...
identify
Develop and refine design briefs based on lessons learnt from evaluation of life's principles
Nature works with small feedback loops, constantly learning, adapting and evolving.
We can also benefit from this thinking, evolving our designs in repeated steps of observation and development, unearthing new lessons and applying these constantly throughout our own design exploration.
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