Biomimicry: Applying Nature's Wisdom to Human Problems with Janine Benyus
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Nate Hagens
4.8 • 552 Ratings
🗓️ 7 August 2024
⏱️ 96 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
(Conversation recorded on June 25th, 2024)
Although artificial intelligence tends to dominate conversations about solving our most daunting global challenges, we may actually find some of the most potent ideas hiding in plain sight in the natural world around us.
In this episode, Nate is joined by Janine Benyus, who has spent decades advocating for biomimicry – a design principle that seeks to emulate nature's models, systems, and elements to solve complex human problems in ways that are sustainable and holistic.
What would our social and technological innovations look like if we started from the foundational requirement that they create conditions conducive to life? In what ways has biomimicry been inspiring projects for the last few decades, revolutionizing everything from energy production to food storage? How can we take biomimicry to a deeper level, changing the way we design and build to be attuned with local habitats and 'return the favor' to nature – helping foster cleaner and more resilient ecosystems?
About Janine Benyus:
Janine Benyus is a biologist, innovation consultant, and author of six books, including Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, in which she popularized an emerging discipline that emulates nature's designs and processes to create a healthier, more sustainable planet.
In 1998, Janine co-founded Biomimicry 3.8, the world's leading nature-inspired innovation and training firm, bringing nature's sustainable designs to 250+ clients including General Electric, Google, Herman Miller, Levi's, and Microsoft.
In 2006, Janine co-founded The Biomimicry Institute, a non-profit that empowers people to create nature-inspired solutions for a healthy planet. The Biomimicry Institute runs annual Design Challenges, a Global Network of tens of thousands of educators and entrepreneurs, and AskNature.org, the award-winning bio-inspiration site for inventors.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | When you ask what it is that life wants, life wants the continuity of life. |
| 0:06.5 | The criteria for success is that your genetic material survives infinitely. |
| 0:13.5 | And that means that you're in a conundrum because all you can do to ensure that life will continue is to take care of the place |
| 0:24.8 | that's going to take care of your offspring, 10,000 generations from now. |
| 0:31.9 | You're listening to The Great Simplification. I'm Nate Higgins. |
| 0:36.3 | On this show, we describe how energy, the economy, |
| 0:39.7 | the environment, and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future. |
| 0:44.7 | By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play |
| 0:51.1 | emergent roles in the coming great simplification. |
| 0:59.0 | It is my belief that a post-growth future will require us to rethink the foundational |
| 1:04.8 | principles we use to design everything, or at least most things, from technology to our policies to our institutions. |
| 1:13.3 | As such, I'm very pleased to welcome today's guest Janine Benyus to the program. |
| 1:19.9 | Janine has played a key role in the popularization of biomimicry, which calls upon the |
| 1:25.8 | wisdom of the natural world to inform and inspire our |
| 1:30.2 | innovation. |
| 1:31.6 | Janine is a biologist, an author, an innovation consultant, and a self-proclaimed nature nerd. |
| 1:38.5 | I suppose I could self-proclaim that about myself. |
| 1:41.8 | In 1997, she published the book, Biomimicry, innovation inspired by |
| 1:47.2 | nature, kicking off decades of her work in the field. The next year, she co-founded the world's |
| 1:53.4 | first bio-inspired consultancy called Biomimicry 3.8, which works with companies such as General Electric, Google, Herman Miller, |
| 2:03.5 | Levi's, and Microsoft. She also co-founded the Biomimicry Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to making |
| 2:10.1 | biology a natural part of our design process. This episode was full of tangible stories of humans learning to do things in a way that is |
... |
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