Biomimicry 3.8 is the first and only innovation consultancy in the world to use a deep knowledge of biological adaptations to help others implement sustainable practices that create conditions conducive to all life. We are interested in creating systemic change that makes a real difference in the world. By translating nature’s genius we hope to reveal a world of potential for our clients, especially in the areas of:
- The built environment, collaborating with architects, engineers, designers, and city/community planners
- Materials use and green chemistry, collaborating with industrial designers, chemists, and other innovators in packaging, fabrication, and design
- Organizational development, collaborating with executive teams and key management to inspire and implement innovative corporate cultures, systems, and processes
See how Biomimicry 3.8 CEO Chris Allen is inspiring management innovation according to nature’s genius (MIX / McKinsey & Co. M-Prize Finalist, June 2012)
A proven process for sustainable innovation
Our process of consulting life’s genius utilizes a clear, proven design methodology, complete with effective implementation tools, developed over a decade of work with clients and partners including Fortune 500 companies, entrepreneurial organizations, universities, governments, and non-profits. It is a disciplined method for applying nature’s design principles to human design challenges. We can teach your designers and engineers this method through on-site workshops or field excursions in Montana, Costa Rica, Mexico, South Africa, India, or your home biome.
Our tools, including Biomimicry Thinking, our proprietary database, and AskNature: Biomimicry Design Portal,bridge the gaps of terminology and specialization that separate biologists, chemists, and other researchers from industrial designers, engineers and other developers and strategists in industry. Using these tools, we have discovered how to effectively translate the wisdom of our teachers—the organisms and ecosystems of the natural world—into designs and systems that become sustainable innovations and evolve into a bio-inspired ethos for our clients.
The Biomimicry Process
As the industrial age moves into the biological age, modern scientific techniques are allowing us to gaze deeper into nature’s secrets and helping us understand and learn from her elegant designs. Our in-house expertise allows us to access this constantly expanding knowledge base and to translate it for relevant application to our client’s design challenges. Design work with Biomimicry 3.8 is an interactive process that involves an innovative blend of design and biology.
Identify Function: Our Biologists at the Design Table (BaDTs) are well respected for their ability to deeply listen to client needs and distill challenges to their functional essence, i.e., What must this product or process do to outperform the state of the art?
Biologize the Question: We then translate these functions into biological questions such as “How does nature recover fresh water from salt water? or “How does nature bond two dissimilar materials?
Find Nature’s Best Practices: Using custom search algorithms, our team combs through digital databases to present clients with a one-of-a-kind resource—an illustrated, amoeba-through-zebra compendium of how nature solves their challenge.
Generate Product Ideas: From these best practices (90% of which are usually new to clients), BaDTs generate ideas for products and processes that are not only cost-effective and innovative, but inherently life-friendly and sustainable.