Biomimicry Thinking for Design & Innovation March 6-11, 2023 | Mill Valley, California
Join us among California’s redwoods for a six-day training experience designed to equip you with the framework to help conceive, create, and implement innovation ideas inspired by nature’s genius.
Set against the backdrop of the redwood forests and oak woodlands of California, this biomimicry immersion workshop is for anyone who wants to learn from nature. Inspire your inner change-maker as you dive deep into the Biomimicry Thinking methodology, exploring how intelligence from nature can elevate your design process and lead to innovation that is cutting edge, effective, elegant, and inherently sustainable.
Bring your organization’s toughest challenge and discover how biological intelligence can drive cutting-edge social innovation solutions. Through six days of experience-driven and science-based discovery and leadership practice, you’ll work with interdisciplinary teams to discover how nature’s genius can foster better collaboration, create successful systems, and navigate change in complex conditions or in times of disturbance. These lessons from nature will help you lead the way to a more adaptable, resilient, cooperative, and networked world.
Who Is It For
Regardless of your familiarity with biomimicry, the workshop is for anyone who wants to re-imagine solutions to social and organizational challenges. Executive, business, non-profit, education, public policy, faith, and government leaders have used this course to change they way they tackle challenges. If you want to learn from nature to inspire new ways of doing business and begin gathering the biomimicry tools you need to elevate the way you think, work, and lead–this workshop is for you.
Where Is It
The workshop will be held at the 8,000-acre Blacktail Ranch, where Montana’s Rocky Mountains meet the prairies in a dramatic convergence of rocky cliffs and grassy hills. You’ll be inspired by the beauty and ruggedness, as well as one of the most biologically rich regions in the entire country. Accommodations include the historical lodge and cabins, and fantastic local, organic food.
Our home base for the week will be historic Ralston White Retreat Center located above the town of Mill Valley—a 20 minute drive from the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco, and 30 minutes to Stinson Beach and Muir Woods.
You’ll join a motivated, hopeful, interdisciplinary crew of participants from around the world.
Lodging at Ralston White Retreat Center includes a choice of shared or private rooms with shared bathrooms.
Learn to use Life’s Principles—design lessons from nature—as a framework for evaluating and optimizing the solutions to design challenges.
Learn to use inspirational biological insight to guide and inform the innovation design process using the biology to design path.
The workshop allows for multiple learning styles and gives participants an opportunity to work with cross disciplinary teams.
Delicious seasonally and locally sourced meals will be served in Ralston White's beautiful dining room.
What To Expect
Every immersion workshop is tailored to the local ecosystem, ensuring each day is brimming with content and exploration. You should plan to clear your agenda and fully immerse yourself in the biomimicry experience!
Throughout the course of this workshop, our world-renowned biomimicry instructors will teach participants to:
Employ the Biomimicry Design Lens, a set of tools with a proven methodology for tapping into and applying nature’s most innovative design strategies.
Use creative problem solving skills to re-frame design challenges in a way that launches discoveries of nature’s genius and harnesses the power of asking: “How would nature..?”
Think like a biologist and access the power of biological intelligence to discover and differentiate nature’s design lessons at the form, process, and system levels for application to a wide variety of challenges.
Practice ecosystem-like thinking by developing creative, biomimicry-based solutions that draw from interdisciplinary perspectives to simultaneously drive innovation and sustainability.
Learn to use inspirational biological insight to guide and inform the innovation design process using the biology to design path.
Monday: Meet the group at the San Francisco Airport for a group shuttle to the venue. After lunch, settle into your room and get oriented to the biological wonders of acorn woodpeckers and gray squirrels in the oaks and redwoods. We’ll provide an overview of what to expect for the week and start building a foundation of the biomimicry philosophy. After dinner you’ll have the chance to relax and prepare for the busy week ahead.
Tuesday: After an orientation to the local ecosystem, we will introduce the biomimicry design approach through a mix of lectures and activities, including iSites a form of biomimetic nature journaling that will help you collect inspiration from nature. In the afternoon, we will go through a fun, fast-paced biomimicry design jam in teams. After dinner, we will wander down to the pond to search for red-bellied newts and other organisms thriving there.
Wednesday: Throughout the remainder of the week, we will tackle each step of Biomimicry Thinking with an interdisciplinary, team-based design challenge, kicking off with how to scope a design challenge biomimetically. With a clear understanding of the team’s design challenge, we then start the process of discovering natural models that can inspire solutions with a hike through the redwood forest ecosystem guided by a local expert.
Thursday: Picking up where we left off, the team work continues as interdisciplinary team dynamics become leveraged to unpack and understand the mechanisms behind the inspiring natural models to the design challenges. We shift from analytical to creative in the afternoon with the kick off to the ideation phase where the biomimicry solutions start to come to life.
Friday: Life’s Principles—the deep patterns behind the way life works—are the focus of the day as we learn about them in the classroom and outside in the local ecosystem. We then use Life’s Principles as a framework for evaluating and optimizing the solutions to the design challenges.
Saturday: As a final wrap-up, we consider how the learnings and experiences collected over the course of the workshop can be applied in the work that we do. The workshop will close at 3:00pm in time for a group shuttle back to the SFO Airport, or stay in California to continue traveling. Either way, your next biomimicry adventure awaits!
Who Should Attend?
This workshop is open to professional and university-level participants from all backgrounds and levels of experience with biomimicry. The agenda is designed for:
Innovators, regardless of sector, who are interested in bringing nature’s genius to their project work and innovation strategies.
Sustainability champions who want to be inspired by the natural world as they work to solve humanity’s toughest sustainability challenges.
Educators who want to bring nature’s genius into the classroom.
Students enrolled in the Graduate Certificate in Biomimicry program with Arizona State University interested in Biomimicry Specialist Certification. This Immersion Workshop counts as one of two required in-person units. Learn more about the requirements for the Biomimicry Specialist Certification here.
Instructors
Brittany Jerlinga | Brittany Jerlinga regularly gets excited about mucus, misunderstood creatures, and things that go bump in the night. Holding both a Master of Science in Biomimicry (Arizona State University) and a Master of Arts in teaching (University of Southern California), she has spent the last 16 years using storytelling and the arts to teach science. Brittany’s interdisciplinary, experiential approach, combined with her boundless curiosity and love of biology, has made her a cherished educator. Her course “How Nature Works” at ASU is often cited as a favorite among students. In collaboration with fellow staff at Biomimicry 3.8, Brittany’s research and storytelling skills supported a series of 6 micro-museums featured in the World Expo in Dubai in 2021. Considering herself a “connector of silos” Brittany currently inspires action with the change-makers of today’s global economy, working with clients such as Microsoft and Jacobs Engineering. Brittany is a biologist, storyteller, and educator for Biomimicry 3.8, and is a Certified Biomimicry Professional.
DaphneFecheyr-Lippens | Daphne Fecheyr-Lippensis a true generalist who loves exploring and connecting new ideas, people and disciplines. Her heart jumps an extra beat when she sees unexpected opportunities to build bridges between seemingly unrelated things. Especially when that collaboration results in a positive impact. Feeling too constrained when trying to fit into a box, she found that biomimicry gives her a clear direction—and satisfaction—in life. Biomimicry brings her a hopeful, creative, and productive vision to create a world where humans fit in with the rest of nature and contribute to the creation of an environment where all of life is safeguarded. Nature is her stress release, and therefore she wants to give back the benefits it gives to her.
Working at Biomimicry 3.8 feels like home to Daphne. She is able to use her passions, skills and expertise in productive and meaningful ways. Daphne holds a Master of Science in biochemistry/biotechnology (University Ghent, Belgium) and a PhD. in biomimicry (University of Akron, USA). She co-founded three startups: Jaswig, Hedgemon, and Stashed, and all were a direct result from a personal need. As an innovation consultant at Board of Innovation, she designed and gave workshops and training courses for corporate clients, all over the world and from almost every sector (food, finance, automotive, healthcare).
Pricing
The all-inclusive price for the workshop includes delicious, fresh, and locally harvested (when possible) breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and snacks; overnight accommodations for five nights; all activities during the week; tuition and course materials; transportation from the SFO International Airport; and administration costs. The pricing is a package offering and cannot be discounted to remove lodging or meals. A variety of accommodations are available at the historic Ralston White Retreat Center to meet your needs and budget. Some rooming types are limited and first come, first served.
Shared room | $3,400 These shared rooms have two or three beds and a shared bathroom. You can request a roommate or we will assign you a roommate of the same gender.
Private room | $3,600 These rooms provide more privacy and contain one queen or king bed with a shared bathroom.
Discounts
All discounts have limited availability, are offered on a first-come, first-serve basis, and may not be combined.
Student discount: Enrolled university students save $250. Must upload a copy of your current student ID upon registration.
ASU student discount: Enrolled ASU students save $500. Must upload a copy of your current student ID upon registration.
Biomimicry Global Network member discount: Members of a local Biomimicry Global Network save $250. Must upload a brief, written endorsement from a local network leader upon registration.
Registration
Registration is now closed.
In addition to a life-changing experience, immersion workshop participants also earn credit toward a Biomimicry Specialist Certificate.
Convince your boss by downloading and sharing our PDF that outlines the professional benefits and values biomimicry immersion workshops can add to any organization. Download Convince Your Boss pdf here.
Each workshop includes a team design challenge that allows participants to employ Biomimicry Thinking to brainstorm nature-inspired solutions to real-world challenges. One past team took on the challenge of purifying water of heavy metals, particulates, and pathogens.
Building Efficiency
Building Efficiency
Each workshop includes a team design challenge that allows participants to employ Biomimicry Thinking to brainstorm nature-inspired solutions to real-world challenges. One past team took on the challenge of utility efficiency, aiming to design a high-use building focusing on waste management with no water supply.
Employee Wellbeing
Employee Wellbeing
Each workshop includes a team design challenge that allows participants to employ Biomimicry Thinking to brainstorm nature-inspired solutions to real-world challenges. One past team took on the challenge of designing environments that support employee well-being.
The Biomimicry Thinking workshop was everything I wanted and more. Rich with new material and hands-on design challenges. I left with a new perspective and a desire to learn more. Highly recommended!
