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!
Our home base is the Great Barrier Lodge on Aotea, Great Barrier Island of New Zealand. The island, situated off the northeastern coast of New Zealand, stands as a pristine haven for biodiversity, boasting a unique collection of plants and animals that thrive in its diverse ecosystems. The island’s native flora showcases an array of native species adapted to its distinct microclimates. Lush forests cloak the landscape, hosting ancient kauri trees, nikau palms, and a variety of ferns. The island’s isolation has fostered the evolution of plant life found nowhere else, creating a botanical tapestry that captures the essence of New Zealand’s natural heritage. Walking through the island’s trails is like stepping back in time, surrounded by a living archive of ancient, endemic plant species.
The diverse habitats of Aotea, Great Barrier Island provide sanctuary for an impressive array of wildlife. The surrounding waters teem with marine life, from colorful fish to majestic rays and even dolphins. Bird enthusiasts will delight in the island’s avian residents, including the endangered black petrel and the iconic New Zealand fantail. The tuatara, a unique reptile often referred to as a “living fossil,” is another remarkable inhabitant. Conservation efforts on the island strive to protect these species and their habitats, ensuring that Aotea, Great Barrier Island, remains a haven for flora and fauna alike, allowing future generations to witness the wonders of this ecological gem in the southwestern Pacific.
Why Join?
Over the course of the workshop, our expert biomimicry instructors will teach participants to:
- Practice applying biomimicry thinking to individual and team challenges
- Define leadership challenges for which nature’s examples can best provide solutions
- Re-imagine organizational leadership, strategy, planning, and operations with inspiration from healthy and evolving ecosystems
- Apply the biomimicry process to model teams and organizations after healthy and evolving ecosystems and to become skillful at adaptive change
- Be part of a diverse learning network guiding the growth of biomimetic applications for organizational development and social innovation
- Apply design lessons from nature that can help grow resilient organizations and foster a regenerative society
In this workshop, we will look at nature’s strategies in three areas that are most relevant for leaders of social innovation:
Context: becoming attuned to your environment, understanding your context and how it is affected by selection pressure, using feedback loops to adapt as conditions change
Relationships: types of symbiotic relationships, factors for effective collaboration and co-evolution, fostering self-organized networks to advance change
Change: adaptation, resilience in the face of disruption, succession through stages of development
PREVIEW AGENDA×DISCOVER NATURE'S GENIUS FOR SOCIAL INNOVATION
What can you expect to experience while you Discover Nature’s Genius for Social Innovation in New Zealand?
Here’s a preview of what each day will include (sample agenda subject to adjustments):
Day 1 | Meet the group at the airport in Auckland for a 30-minute flight to the Aotea, Great Barrier Island. Settle in at the venue and spend the afternoon getting oriented to the biological wonders of the island while getting to know your fellow participants. We’ll provide an overview on how organizational leadership, strategy, planning, and operations can draw inspiration from healthy, evolving ecosystems.
Day 2 | During the first full day, you’ll be introduced to Biomimicry Thinking tools and methodology. Immerse yourself in the new skills as you meet the species on the island. Practice seeing with your new biomimicry lenses.
Day 3 | Begin honing your observation skills through exploration of the lush forests and adjacent meadows. Explore nature’s resilience strategies while connecting with Life’s Principles, a Biomimicry 3.8 tool that summarizes how life survives and thrives on Earth, and how our organizations and systems might too.
Day 4 | Deepen your understanding of Life’s Principles as we kayak in the bay, keeping our eye out for the endangered black petrel, the iconic New Zealand fantail, and dolphins. Regroup back at the Great Barrier Lodge to discuss the experience of abstracting Life’s Principles in the field. After dinner, we’ll look to apply those lessons through an ecosystem audit of your own organization or social-change endeavor.
Day 5 | We’ll explore New Zealand's only National Marine Park for lessons on endurance and flow as we look to apply design lessons to help grow resilient organizations and foster a regenerative society. We’ll practice applying lessons to model teams and organizations to become skillful at adaptive change. Spend the evening sharing your team’s design ideas inspired by the day’s discoveries.
Day 6 | New lessons await as we explore a riparian zone and discuss the dynamics of change in nature as a group. After lunch, spend the rest of the day on a continued journey of discovery into your selected biological lessons and share with the group what you’ve learned and what ideas it has inspired. Give thanks to the wisdom found in this rich biome and celebrate the final evening of the workshop with the group!
Day 7 | Reflections on building the diverse learning network of biomimicry practitioners in social innovation wrap up our time. We’ll close the workshop after lunch and return to Auckland as a group … or stay in the area 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 anyone who is interested in learning from healthy and resilient natural systems and applying those insights to the human systems in which we are working, so that we can create a more regenerative society and world. These lessons are useful for organizations and businesses, but also just as compelling for people working in the public sector, or who are interested in adapting their own leadership practices so they can be more effective change agents.
If your work involves becoming more effective in collaboration, creating robust institutional systems, navigating change in complex conditions or in times of disturbance, communication and adaptation in response to signals …this workshop is for you!
Past participants have come from a wide range of fields: nonprofits, education, public policy, community organizers, faith communities, business and more. The cross-pollination of professional and cultural backgrounds, ideas and experiences will enhance your workshop experience.
For students enrolled in the Graduate Certificate in Biomimicry program with Arizona State University and interested in a 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.
Pricing
The all-inclusive price for the workshop includes tuition and course materials; overnight accommodations for six nights at the Great Barrier Lodge; delicious, freshly prepared meals and snacks; all field trips and activities during the week; transportation from Auckland; and administration costs. The workshop allows for all participants to be onsite, contributing to the complete experience. The pricing is a package offering and cannot be discounted to remove lodging or meals.
We have structured our pricing model to accommodate diverse requirements. If you are an executive or if your attendance is sponsored by your company, kindly opt for the corporate rate. For educators, students, or individuals employed by a non-profit organization, please choose the appropriate rate. If your situation does not align with any of these categories, you may select the “Other” rate.
All accommodations are in shared double or triple occupancy rooms. Reserve your seat for only $500.
Corporate Rate | $4,250
Non-profit/Educator/Student Rate | $3,500
Other | $3,850
Image ©Cameron McGeorge Photography
ASU Student Discounts
Discounts
Enrolled ASU students save $500. Discounts have limited availability and are offered on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Registration
Regular Registration ends June 15, 2024.
All instructions and pricing information are included within the form. Late registration will be accepted pending availability. Late registrants will incur a $500 late fee. We expect this workshop to sell out so please register early to guarantee your seat in the workshop. The group will be capped at 22 participants.
Cancellation Policy
Deposits are non-refundable. Cancellation 6+ weeks prior to the workshop, your deposit will become a credit that you can use at a later date or transfer as a gift. Cancellation 4-6 weeks prior to the workshop, a $500 cancellation fee plus incurred expenses will be deducted from your refund amount unless your seat is filled by someone else. Less than one month from the workshop start date, no refunds are permitted, but partial credit towards a future workshop will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
If the workshop is canceled for any reason by Biomimicry 3.8, workshop fees will be refunded in full.
Photo by Joe Roger
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Instructors
Dr. Dayna Baumeister | With a devotion to applied natural history and a passion for sharing the genius of nature, Dr. Dayna Baumeister has worked in the field of biomimicry with business partner Janine Benyus since 1998, traveling the world as a biomimicry thought-leader, business consultant, and professor. Together they founded the Biomimicry Guild consulting practice, The Biomimicry Institute 501c3, and Biomimicry 3.8, a B-Corp social enterprise that helps clients find innovation inspired by nature and offers the highest level of biomimicry training to professionals worldwide.
Dayna’s foundational work has been critical to the biomimicry movement, establishing it as a fresh and innovative practice, as well as a philosophy to meet the world’s sustainability challenges. As an educator, researcher, and design consultant, Dayna has helped more than 100 companies consult the natural world for elegant and sustainable design solutions, as diverse as Nike, Interface, General Mills, Boeing, Google, Natura, Herman-Miller, Kohler, Seventh Generation and Procter & Gamble. Dayna is a natural systems thinker and brings a unique perspective to her work to help others see nature as model, measure, and mentor. She designed and teaches the world’s first MSc in Biomimicry as a Professor of Practice at ASU, co-founded, is director of The Biomimicry Center at ASU. She compiled more than 20 years of experience in the practice of biomimicry into the world’s only textbook for the field: Biomimicry Resource Handbook: A Seed Bank of Knowledge and Best Practices (2014).
Toby Herzlich | Biomimicry for Social Innovation Founder Toby Herzlich is a leadership trainer and ICF-certified coach, master facilitator, and certified Biomimicry Specialist. Toby is committed to the creation of a just, healthy, and regenerative society, and heartfully enthused about the transformative potential of applying nature’s wisdom to humanity’s sustainability aspirations. With more than 25 years of facilitation experience, she is a Senior Trainer with the Rockwood Leadership Institute, co-founder of Cultivating Women’s Leadership, and a faculty in B3.8’s Biomimicry Professional Certification Program. As a consultant, Toby advances climate solutions initiatives at organizations such as the Sierra Club and the AgroEcology Fund. With a commitment to race equity at the center of her work, Toby finds much of her purpose in catalyzing diverse networks of social change innovators, and is growing a co-evolving network of leaders using nature’s intelligence as inspiration and guidance.
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