BIOMIMICRY IN ORGANIZATIONS

Fausto Tazzi

with
Cinzia de Rossi
Written in Paris, between August 2013 and July 2014
Translation from Italian by Meaghan Toohey
© ft 2014
Second Edition written in Paris, January 2016
© ft 2016

ISBN-13: 978-1505420807
 ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Fausto Tazzi has more than twenty years of experience as manager

in FMCG multinational companies. Graduated in Business
Administration, his professional background is mostly in sales and
marketing, frequently with international responsibilities. He deeply
believes that developing people and inspiring organizations are the
key success factors for a modern leader.

Cinzia de Rossi is an international executive coach and

communication advisor. Her interventions are grounded in business
psychology, with a specific focus on the concept of essential
leadership. Graduated in Anthropology and Political Science, she
has been working for more than ten years in the corporate world on
strategic communication programs. In 2016 she has founded her
own company Essential Conversations. A change agent in
organisations, she supports leaders in identifying the best conditions
for sustainable growth.

After leaving their home country Italy, they have been based in
United Arab Emirates and in Egypt. During their business
assignments they have extensively travelled around Middle East &
Asia. They currently live in Paris with their daughter Chloé.

The content of this essay reflects only the authors’ views and it is not
to be related in any way with the positions of the companies for
which they worked and they are working for.
 NOTE TO SECOND EDITION

Two years after having published the first edition of this paper, the
online sales reports were showing an interest raising slowly but
steadily all around the world. This has been a renewed source of
energy that motivated us to review our original work. In biomimetic
jargon this would be described as a process of natural regeneration,
i.e. once a first cycle is completed the results themselves generate
new and further opportunities pushing the need for continuing the
exploration.
By reading our text two years later, we better realized its strengths
and its limits, this second edition has been re-edited to better
underline key concepts and facilitate the reading experience. We
also realized that, if we wanted to further spread the biomimicry
meme in organizations worldwide, we should further ease the bridge
from theory to practice. We do not make a living out of writing, this
project never targeted an economic return; nevertheless sales
reports are important because our ambition is not just to write a kind
of post-hippy purely theorical essay. Our purpose is to give our
personal contribution in affirming biomimicry as a source of
inspiration to improve life in organisations. We realized that in order
to achieve that, our script should become more action-oriented. Only
by evolving this paper into a practical guideline from theory to
implementation we would have given a full meaning to our initial
work. Therefore, this second edition is enriched with the back-of-the-
business cards workshops: short and simple - Cinzia would
say essential - exercises to put biomimicry at work. As these ideas
are too important to remain just on paper. We hope you will
appreciate the effort, have a nice reading and let us know.

FC&c
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1
Introduction to the Concept of Biomimicry

Chapter 2
Pyramids, Plum Trees, and Biomimicry in Organizations

Chapter 3
Nature’s effectiveness and efficiency, strong bonds and reciprocal
structures

Chapter 4
Strength through flexibility, the resilience of wood and bones

Chapter 5
Zero-sum systems: using organizational resources without
generating waste and stress

Chapter 6
The life of a cubic meter of grassland. Or, the importance of back
office

Chapter 7
Swordfish, polar bears, whales and top managers
 Chapter 8
Diversification: organizational grasslands and multi-cultures

Chapter 9
Termites, plants, camels, and quantum theory

Chapter 10
Releasing control: nighttime surprises on Richard Dawkin’s computer

Chapter 11
Mobilizing energies for change: deserts, penguins, leaders and
conventions

Chapter 12
Where function and structure merge

Chapter 13
Brackish lagoons and greenhouses in the desert: from the
sustainable organization to the regenerating one

Chapter 14
A compass and a map for migrating in a biomimetic organization

Chapter 15
To be continued…

Acknowledgements and disclaimer

To our daughter, Chloé
"We always write about something we do not know. You can say you
prefer a book grounded on extensive field experience, but the inner
motivation to write comes always from something missing, that very
something that we would like to know, but that is still obscure to us"
Italo Calvino
 Chapter 1

Introduction to the Concept of Biomimicry

In 1973, Ray C. Anderson founded Interface, Inc. with the goal of

producing the first free-lay carpet tiles for offices and homes in
America. Today, Interface is one of the world’s leading producers of
modular commercial floor coverings. It sells its products in 110
countries and has manufacturing locations on four continents.
Anderson died of cancer in 2011, and the following year his family
started the Ray C. Anderson Foundation to promote and sustain the
development of a naturally sustainable economic system for future
generations. In developing his original concept of natural modularity,
Anderson was broadly drawing inspiration from the concept of
biomimicry. In the latter part of his life and career, he spoke more
and more frequently at conferences throughout the world. Several of
his presentations are available on the web, and his TED Talks are of
particular interest. At his numerous speeches, he often began by
asking the audience to close their eyes and imagine themselves in
some place of beauty and tranquility. Then he asked for a show of
hands by those whose imaginary place was outdoors in nature.
When Ray told the audience to reopen their eyes, practically
everyone in the room had their hands up. Without exception, people
always imagined a forest, a river, a mountain, a beach or another
location in nature. You can replicate the experiment yourself and
you’ll be faced with glaring proof of our biophilia: our profound affinity
with the natural world that surrounds us. Biophilia is a term that
became popular thanks to the work of biologist E. O. Wilson. It refers
to the hypothesis that there is a deeply-rooted, instinctive link
between human beings and all living organisms. The biophilia
hypothesis is at the base of biomimicry, as Janine Benyus explains
in the introduction to her book Biomimicry.

Biomimicry - from the Greek words bios, meaning

life and mimesis, meaning imitation - is a new
branch of science that studies patterns in nature
and uses them as inspiration for finding innovative
solutions to our society’s problems.
Personally, I think that my own interest in nature as a source of
inspiration goes back to my youth, and probably it has something to
do with having been born and raised in the countryside, where the
shape of a nest, the shell of a snail, the current of a river and the
dew on a spider web are well-known images that spark connections,
inspire reflection and still resound deep in the core of my being. The
other component of the biochemical reaction that generated this brief
paper is the pleasure, the excitement – and often the pressure – I
derive on a daily basis from the honor and the responsibility of
managing people, coordinating work groups and being part of the
executive committee of a large multinational organization. At a time
in my career when I had just taken on new and greater
responsibilities I was looking for new inspiration when, while leafing
through an architecture manual by Michael Pawlyn, I chanced upon
the concept of biomimicry for the first time. I followed up, reading the
original Janine Benyus’ and Paul Hawken’s books and at that very
moment I realized that

the search for more efficient, effective and

sustainable ways of managing businesses, public
organizations and non-profits may simply be a
 question of considering how nature has faced and
solved many of the problems that we have to
confront every day.
Drawing inspiration from nature can help us identify truly new and
brilliant ways of looking at a situation and achieve solutions that are
effective and innovative at the same time.

Applying biomimicry in organizational development can also be

incredibly fun. It means in-depth study of natural ecosystems to find
within them the spark of an idea that leads to designing solid
organizational structures, continually evolving in perfect harmony
with the surrounding economic environment. It means building
companies that perform at their best not only in what they produce
but also in terms of respecting and constantly improving the place
and time where the work happens. Biomimicry captured my
imagination with its very pragmatic yet culturally revolutionary
promise. I realized that often

asking oneself the question “What would nature do

in this situation?” can open the door to amazing
revelations, and that the organizational
architecture that comes out of such revelations
can be highly elegant, effective and extraordinarily
functional.
While in the most practical sense biomimicry is a methodology for
researching sustainable solutions by borrowing from patterns in
nature, this process is only the most superficial level of the
biomimicry approach. Embracing it completely means engaging in an
in-depth dialogue with the organism being studied, its organizational
design, the processes that make it functional, and its relationships
with the entire ecosystem around it. Only if we can succeed in
mimicking biological organisms on all three levels we will really
manage to understand the extremely refined ways in which a living
thing adapts to its ecosystem in order to prosper in the short and
long term, constantly renewing the conditions that promote life. In
this sense, our approach deepens until it reaches an almost
transformative level where biomimicry itself becomes a value: an
open mindset that leads us to observe a blade of grass, a lake, a
cornfield or a forest with deep respect, to discover the ultimate truth:
that we are nature, that the distinction between us and the rest of
living things is just a false perception that dissolves in the very
moment we open our eyes.

An enormous variety of genera and species live on planet Earth.

Each one of them represents a story of evolutionary success and
constant improvement. Every organism is an organization, in many
cases it has to resolve the same problems we face and it succeeds
with grace, elegance and economy of resources. Our current
economic development has reached notable results, generating
unparalleled wealth and security, greatly improving the quality of life
of an incredible number of people throughout the world. Modern
medicine has brought about incredible progress in health conditions
and life expectancy. Air transport and the digital revolution have
multiplied our communicative abilities, opening grand new prospects
for worldwide economic and cultural development. Yet when we
pause to observe some of the extraordinary structures into which
nature has evolved, we can’t help feeling a great sense of humility
and respect for everything we still have to learn. But the cycle is not
complete unless we learn to say thank you to nature, and to do it in a
meaningful way. This brief paper is intended to be our thank you
letter to nature, and I hope that by reading it, others might be
inspired to take action, to explore solutions, and to learn from a
resource of ideas that has the benefit of almost four billion years of
research and development.
Biomimicry at work: the back-of-business card
workshops

Using the back of business cards as a support to force clear and

concise ideas is a hint that I discovered many years ago into a
Unilever’s strategic handbook. The limit imposed by the space on the
back of a business card forces to progressively fine-tune our
strategic thinking to reach the essence of the idea and to write it
down in the most clear and concise form. Now I can say this is a
biomimic concept: beauty in nature often derives from economy of
resources and the absence of the superfluous is part of the elegance
and of the precision that we perceive.

So, let’s describe on the back of a business card

The current state of the organization
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Then, on a second one

Where we want to be: the picture of success
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On a third one
Main gaps
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And finally, on a fourth one, let’s put biomimicry at work:

What nature would do in such situations?
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 Chapter 2

Pyramids, Plum Trees, and Biomimicry in

Organizations

Gordon Mackenzie was an illustrator who worked for more than thirty
years at Hallmark headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri. The
following story isn’t a joke: in his last years with the company,
Mackenzie managed to convince his superiors to grant him the title
of Creative Paradox, whereby his role was just to support the
creative proposals that the teams of graphic designers brought him
by giving them informal validation. His title had no other meaning,
and he had no other authority. The position of Creative Paradox
probably provided him with a completely unexpected point of view on
the inner workings of an organization, as well as a good deal of free
time because in the nineties he went on to write Orbiting the Giant
Hairball, a delightful little manual on surviving corporate life, wherein
we find the story of the pyramid and the plum tree.

A pyramid is an incredibly solid and elegant architectonic structure.

Companies have always been using traditional pyramid structures
because they are extremely high-performing in terms of execution
and control. They have undeniable advantages in being easily
represented in organization charts, with clear job descriptions and
easy-to-understand boundaries between roles. In these
organizations, there is almost never any doubt about the point where
the responsibilities of one function end and those of another begin.
This is where Mackenzie starts his reflection, pointing out that
pyramid organizations are based on divisions – a word that in itself
means the state of being divided – and on departments – another
term that ironically sounds a lot like the word departed -: in the end,
a pyramid organization is nothing more than… a big tomb.
In plum trees, the plums – the profit providers – are on top, among
the branches, while the trunk and the roots - the elements of the
organization tasked with the job of sustaining them and finding the
resources necessary for them to grow - are at the base.

In a plum tree organization, the managers and

team-leaders are the branches, they have the
responsibility of connecting the fruit with the trunk
and the roots, or rather, with the formerly “top”
that has now became the “base” management.
Resources flow from the roots through the trunk
and the branches to the fruits, naturally creating
the conditions that yield the best results.
A plum tree organization is a living organism, based on cells of
teams formed with diverse and varied skillsets and on business units
that represent the molecules of the organization itself and work
together, connected by unity of vision and goals. Each single fruit is
a unique biological organism, constantly developing and slightly
different in shape from the one next to it. The shape of each
business unit in a fruit tree organization is not predetermined: they
are all similar but at the same time slightly different from each other,
each reflecting the environmental conditions that determined their
growth. In a plum tree organization the business units and work
groups are multidisciplinary cells that naturally have both the solidity
to stand up to difficulties and the flexibility needed to grab
opportunities when they come. The result is a natural and continuous
vitality that generates a substantial improvement in collaboration
between teams and business units toward the targeted results.

Choosing to structure an organization based on a fruit tree model

means deciding first and foremost to shape the structure around the
fruit, i.e. around the people, rather than around a pyramid of
procedures and positions. We may be able to build processes that
are extremely reliable, reasonably versatile, and easily controllable,
but we can’t artificially reproduce procedures that can walk, make
themselves a coffee, and at the same time think about the solution to
a problem. By comparison, a human being is capable of an infinite
variety of interactions in every moment of their personal and
professional day. Men and women can multi-task; they perceive
situations, recognize recurring events in complex environments, they
learn in real time. All these are things that pyramids, procedures and
routines can’t do. A standard component works according to rather
precise specifications; any supervisor in the world can study a
handbook and define the procedures to manage the operations.
Managing a business on the basis of something so unpredictable as
human reactions could without any doubt turn out to be a difficult
task, but the price to pay for ensuring effective control would be
excessive uniformity. Atoms in a crystal align naturally and naturally
maintain their state, forming a design much like a kind of three-
dimensional wallpaper that repeats and stretches out in all
directions. In liquids, the molecules tend to position themselves
randomly, making it impossible to describe or predict exactly where
they are or where they are going to be in the next instant. It is
precisely in this border area between control and chaos that the
point of optimal performance of a biomimetic organization lies.

Halfway between the extremely solid rigidity of a

crystal and the flexibility and disorder of a liquid,
there lies an ideal liquid crystal organizational
state: an organization that has all its molecules
 perfectly oriented in the same direction but at the
same time not forcedly positioned in a predefined
order.
These organizations aren’t completely structurally programmable,
their business units are well directed towards a vision and defined
goals, yet can’t be represented in a precise organization chart. All
human decisions, including major economic decisions, aren’t rational
routines; they are emotional options more than anything else.
Learning takes place through experiences, and the same
experiences change the basic cells that form them. They’re
organizations that “think physically”; they don’t compute
mathematical formulas or logical analyses, but move through
emotional experiences that can cause them to take on many
different shapes in the space of very little time.

Mackenzie’s story of the pyramid and the plum tree still doesn’t
come anywhere near negating the value of hierarchy. Nature is
based on highly elaborate and rigorously respected hierarchical
structures, but they aren’t always monolithic structures oriented from
the top down like pyramids are.

Where traditional organizational charts draw rigid

shapes, imposed from the outside with hardly any
planned resilience, natural structures are
extremely rich in interfaces that allow multiple
separate sources of control, increase durability
and flexibility and preempt the potentially
destructive impact of a rift on the whole.
They’re biological hierarchies that are highly influenced by the
surrounding environment, organizations capable of self-
determination, of assembling themselves, capable of absorbing rapid
growth and also of contracting and sheltering themselves in periods
of crisis. Indeed, we should stop asking ourselves which type of
organization is the better one: we know very well that a tree is
infinitely more fruitful than a pyramid .

Finally, there’s one last lesson from the story of the pyramid and the
plum tree that we should keep in mind. Pyramids are marvelous
buildings that come from a distant time, five thousand years before
the Common Era: they are structures from the past. We can learn a
great deal from our past but if we limit ourselves to simply applying
past solutions to current and future challenges it’s highly probable
that we’re on the verge of committing very serious errors. This is
because in our time the world, the economy, communications,
business, relationships, and people themselves are evolving toward
dimensions and at speeds never before seen. Our responsibility as
leaders of public or private organizations, profit or non-profit, is to
search for and promote the conditions for a better future for our own
companies, for the people who work there, for the community we live
in and ultimately also for ourselves.
Biomimicry at work

Let’s sketch on the back of two business cards our organization

Represented as a pyramidal chart

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And

Represented as a plum tree chart

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In nature we can find thousands of different organizational setups,

we will discover some of them in the next chapters: bones, shells,
prairies, nests … Which other natural form can inspire you a different
organizational design ?
 Chapter 3

Nature’s effectiveness and efficiency, strong bonds

and reciprocal structures

Resources are generally extremely expensive; by comparison, the

investment of time and money necessary to organize them is an
economical effort. A good biomimetic design should be simple and
naturally understandable without requiring too many inductions,
manuals or explanations.

A biomimetic evolution has to be started by changing the least

possible number of elements vis-a-vis the current state, and at the
same time by removing the greatest possible amount of stress from
the system. It just appeals to common sense, biological behavior has
always been naturally simple, creative and efficient.

A shell, a bone, a bamboo stick are simple and at the same time
high-performing structures, designed following elegant shapes and
built with the minimum available resources. Their performance
derives from their design rather than from sheer mass: at points of
high wear, the concentration of resources is higher; where the stress
is lower, the structure is lightened as much as possible. Nature has
progressively streamlined the areas around the core and has
reorganized resources where they can provide the greatest
performance, reaching impressive results with a very small percent
of the initial resources.

Plant leaves use solar energy to collect sugars in their cells,

increasing the influx of water and, as a consequence, their internal
pressure. The pressure that each cell exerts on the one next to it is
the force that keeps the leaf rigid (which also explains why plants
collapse when they are short of water). A leaf is made up of very little
woody tissue and derives a great part of its strength from reciprocal
pressure between cells and membranes. Leaves teach us the
importance of the bonds in an organization; they are masters at
creating connections that exponentially increase performance and
simultaneously reinforce the structure itself. It is possible to foster a
similar effect in an organization by investing to facilitate the creation
of bonds that increase reciprocal trust capital. Adequate investment
in the creation of bonds will always yield an immediate and incredibly
high return on the effectiveness of the work and, as a natural
consequence, on corporate results. In a biomimetic organization,
team building activities must not be relegated to an annual off-site
convention; the ability to create strong bonds must rapidly become a
basic daily prerogative for modern companies and their visionary
leaders.

Beauty in nature often derives from economy of

resources. The absence of the superfluous is part
of the elegance and of the precision that we
perceive.
Biomimicry at work

Let’s go back to the current state of the organization we prepared in

chapter 1 and the organizational chart we sketched in chapter 2

The current state of the organization

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Represented as a pyramidal chart

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Let’s now identify on a new business card the main sources of stress
in the system.

Main sources of stress

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What nature would do in such situations?

On a fourth business card let’s list the potential actions we could

implement to remove the greatest possible amount of stress from the
system.

Remove the stress

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 Chapter 4

Strength through flexibility, the resilience of wood

and bones

In nature, living things live where they work and work where they
live, exactly like people in a company. One of nature’s basic
principles is to work only under conditions that are favorable to life.
Biological structures are produced at the same temperatures and
pressures of the surrounding environment, using only materials
found on location, simply employing the available water as a
chemical solvent. The internal structure of an abalone shell is twice
as strong as the best ceramic obtained with the most cuttin-edge
production technology, and a spider’s web is five times as strong as
a cable made of Kevlar or steel. The adhesives of some crustaceans
can stick to any surface under water and a rhinoceros horn can
repair itself and regrow on its own. This makes for a harsh contrast
with the way companies organize their structures or define their aims
and incentive systems. In economics, we often confuse power with
size, organizational solidity with large structures, the potential of a
project with the number of people working on it or the size of the
investments behind it. In nature, strength is obtained by minimizing
structures and arranging them so that they naturally support
movement. Biology plans for a certain degree of flexibility,
maximizing resilience.
 What would happen if we were able to build
organizations as strong as shells, create bonds as
tough as spider webs, reach cohesion between
functions like crustaceans and create self-
motivation that can nourish itself like a
rhinoceros’s horn?

To the naked eye, an abalone shell appears smooth, but an electron

microscope reveals it for what it really is: an intricate structure that
enables the abalone to withstand enormous stresses. If we look
closely between the “bricks” that it is made of, we see a thin layer of
gummy polymer that reacts by expanding when the bricks are
subjected to tension and sliding when they are under pressure. If a
crack is created on the surface, this structure forces the spreading
crack to follow an extremely contorted route, until it dissipates
quickly by itself. The result is that an abalone is twice as strong as
any known ceramic. When struck, it tends not to shatter; it
demonstrates an exceptional ability to change shape and to react
under stress. The electron microscope images of mother of pearl
taken from above show yet another refinement: in the overlapping
layers, the hexagonal discs that form the structure of the shell are
paired so that each one is a mirror image of the one next to it. It is a
kind of repetition and mathematical elegance characteristic of many
biological forms, an organizational hierarchy at practically
unbelievable levels of precision. The repetition and overlapping of
hierarchical structures is one of nature’s secrets. From the micro
level to the macro level we invariably find nested hierarchical
structures designed with extreme precision and strength and
flexibility are just the natural consequence of this. On our side, we
are still trying to draw inspiration from nature to draw a more
effective flow chart, while we continue to design structures and
processes that put solidity first in our organizations, nature has
evolved over millennia into extremely elegant forms in which the
basic concept is strength through flexibility.

The membranes of wood cells have the ability to adapt to the

slightest changes in pressure and length on the plant’s surface. The
bones of the gazelle have evolved to naturally be slightly curved in
order to cushion the aerodynamic loads when it has to spring into
movement, change direction abruptly, or make dramatic leaps to
escape predators. When a fly moving at top speed hits a spider web,
the web, instead of breaking, changes shape and absorbs most of
the impact. Once the stress is absorbed, the web intelligently
bounces back and delicately collects the meal. There are no
manmade fibers or metals able to come near the spider web’s
combination of elasticity and strength. This designed-in resilience is
nature’s secret, it is an interesting contrast: we continue to design
organizational structures with a limited degree of elasticity, with only
a limited ability to adapt to the stresses of the surrounding
environment.
Faster and deeper changes are taking place in the competitive
landscape, companies of the present and of the future will have to be
able to structure themselves like spider webs, leaves and bones,
rather than like bricks, silos and pyramids. Solidity isn’t the only
virtue possible in an organization.
A liquid or foam organization changes shape more easily, gives a
little without breaking, expands and contracts in the waves of the
economic tide. From times of prosperity to times of crisis, its shell will
yield a little yet never break. A solid organization hit by a significant
adverse event will be swept by fissures that could spread
catastrophically. In a foam structure the cracks spread only until they
encounter the first air bubble, where they lose most of their strength;
a foam organization knows when to give in and when to hold firm. In
some cases, creating air bubbles - intentionally understaffing an
organization that will probably suffer significant impacts in the near
future – can be an effective strategy for quickly blocking the spread
of negative effects.
This is also a key issue for the leaders who direct such
organizations. The horn of a rhinoceros has the incredible property
of being able to reconstruct itself from the inside. Its structure is
formed of an enormous number of small needle-like parts,
technically called spicules, carefully arranged one next to the other
without touching. This intelligent density makes it incredibly tough.
The rhinoceros’s horn can withstand enormous pressures from all
sides; each one bends to the point of breaking but doesn’t allow the
shock to be carried deeper. In the same way, a leader must be able
to withstand pressure and not distribute the stress to the entire
organization. Incidentally, another distinctive trait of the rhinoceros’s
horn that could be is its ability to heal itself: it uses the same polymer
that the spicules are made of to fill any crack that forms, healing and
regenerating from the inside. What a source of inspiration for
modern-times stressed leaders!
Biomimicry at work

Let’s go back to the first chapter’s business cards

The current state of the organization

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And

Where we want to be: the picture of success

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Drawing inspiration from nature – a bamboo stick, a bone, a shell, a

cobweb – let’s explore now:
Where can we lightweight the organization subtracting
resources?
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And

Where shall we reinforce, adding redundancies

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 Chapter 5

Zero-sum systems: using organizational resources

without generating waste and stress

Around ninety-six percent of all living material is made of four

elements: carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen. Nature uses an
extremely limited variety of resources. We have seen how spiders
build their incredibly strong threads by aligning a series of polymers
that are then worked onto a kind of organic spool between their back
legs; when ready, this material is stronger than Kevlar, the strongest
synthetic fiber that man has been able to create so far, and spiders
produce their thread using only water and flies as raw materials.
In biology, an organism is driven to fully capitalize on an available
resource. Nature is a great opportunist and whenever there are
underused resources in an ecosystem, a profitable niche for them is
found. Biological organisms progress ingeniously, creating structures
out of the resources that already exist in a location. One could say
they always manage to find the best way of using the talents found in
the organization. Instead of tackling problems directly, nature tends
to influence them and change them while solving them; some of the
most noteworthy evolutionary changes have taken place in
conditions of scarce resources. We think that an organization’s
performance can be stimulated in more or less the same way, so that
we will use resources more efficiently.
 When we shift into a biomimetic perspective, we
see that things rapidly change their identities;
waste becomes a precious unused resource, a new
economic and organizational paradigm opens up,
and where there had been layoffs new sources of
wealth are found.
We still have a lot to learn about how to build and maintain a healthy
and efficient organization. One of the most important lessons we can
take away from our observation of nature is to always view by-
products and waste as meaningful opportunities. The redundant
number of dry branches conserved by acacias in the desert seems
to have the function of shading the live part and the ground
underneath so that evaporation is reduced. We must endeavor to
take inspiration from spiders and acacias before we even start to
think about “catching flies” or “cutting dry branches”. The traditional
economic approach, based on optimizing capital and resources as a
function of the company’s economic performance, is an equation that
may have made sense at its origins, in the days of the Industrial
Revolution, but in the twenty-first century we need to give some
serious consideration to the exact opposite scenario.

Nature turns traditional price ratios upside down

because it is able to recognize the real overall
costs of its economic decisions. In the same way, a
biomimetic organization requires extremely
accurate financial information regarding the full
costs of a process or business unit.
Traditional accounting, first and foremost, measures costs and
earnings, cash flow, sales, salaries, savings, profits and losses; in
doing so, it doesn’t give sufficient recognition to the value of other
extremely important elements such as job creation, resources
generated for new investments or the spread of the entrepreneurial
spirit. Viewing human resources as nothing but costs doesn’t do
justice to the fact that, when managed well, salary increases and
incentives have a clear and significant positive effect on the
organization’s effectiveness. It is actually a simple economic
correlation: when the cost of a resource increases, the company is
driven to optimize its use by improving the organization’s design,
creating more effective and efficient systems. Strategically, each
organization should continually outdo itself in its capacity to leverage
resources and graciously reward every initiative that adds value.
Only in this way can we ensure that economic prosperity will
coincide with the creation of interesting jobs and social well-being.
Rewarding game-changing initiatives on a scheme planned and
applied over a period, the organization have time to innovate,
reinvent itself, plan and adapt: a three-to-five years organizational
development plan should generally allow enough time for
investments to pay off.

Defining a reasonable period of time for organizational investments

is probably one of the most important decisions in running a
business, and one of the most stimulating development plans that a
company can undertake in the course of its existence. Every
organization can achieve truly transformative advancement if it
prepares to grab opportunities, if it knows how to recognize them
and act instantly. When correctly managed, this natural flexibility
could bring about the greatest wave of innovation ever imagined.
This is the level of organizational flexibility that allows for making
mistakes and learning from them, restarting not from the original
point of departure but from a few steps ahead. The underlying
consideration is that we will have to create an organization flexible
enough to continually evolve by adapting to the changes of the
market and of the competitive environment, in equilibrium with the
current economic trends and always ready to grasp that decisive
point where an intelligent combination of planning, teamwork and
individual motivation makes it possible to over-achieve objectives.
Biomimicry at work

Let’s put the focus on waste, potential redundancies, under utilized

resources. On the back of a new business card let’s list them

Wasted, redundant or under-utilized resources

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Now, as spiders, we will spool our thread from by-products. How

these resources could be immediately recycled into more effective
organizational designs.

Re-cycled as new growth generators

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Chapter 6

The life of a cubic meter of grassland. Or, the

importance of back office

Grassland is land at its most natural state, the grass grows

spontaneously, seeds give life to new shoots, and shoots to an
explosion of flowers. Every species has its own role and cooperates
with those around it in a variety of shapes, colors and sizes.
Underground, the roots weave themselves into a thick cloth that
traps water and soaks up nutrient-rich substances. Bees and
butterflies, the pollinating insects, flutter and buzz from one plant to
another, and thousands of species of ants, millipedes, larvae,
worms, bacteria and fungi dig, eat and excrete, continuously
fertilizing the soil. Inch after inch, their work dissolves the nutrients
and leaves them ready to be absorbed by roots or stored in the
humus, which transforms the ground into a kind of living sponge.

The interaction among all the microorganisms that

occupy a cubic meter of grassland is incredibly
complex and well-planned. The astounding
diversity maximizes life and obviates waste. The
secret of this ecosystem is its ability to balance
what is above with what is below, in a perennial
state of dynamic and positive equilibrium.
A biomimetic organization must be able to behave like grassland,
with a front office that grows and expands by leveraging – and in
turn, supporting – the humus of the back office. In a “grassland”
organization, the less visible parts cannot be ignored; it is a work
environment that knows how to keep everyone involved and
interested, an organizational plan that releases the positive energy of
the men and women who work there, that stimulates their desire and
need to create value.

When we work, we do it in exchange for something

much more precious than money, power or
position; human beings are always looking for
higher values, always in search of meaning. A
modern organizational plan must be able to
provide meaning, to create jobs rich in value, to
offer the opportunity to improve the company, the
person, society and the world.
A grassland organization is still an idea in the embryonic phase, we
don’t know exactly what it means, nor whether it will be possible to
fully realize it, or how. We find ourselves largely unsatisfied with our
current organizational designs but we don’t yet have an exact idea of
how to improve them. The road may not be fast or simple but we will
not allow ourselves to be discouraged by the complexity of the task.
We will think of the importance of the small things in a grassland
ecosystem: every step is important if it is taken in the right direction;
any transition, no matter how small and incremental, has the
potential to improve our businesses and our lives. We can even
settle for evolving only halfway, to that way point between the
controlled rigidity of pyramids and the natural wildness of grasslands,
where the potent creative forces of self-organization (that we will
discover in chapter 12) begin to unfold.
Biomimicry at work

Let’s think about the back-office functions in the organization.

Main back-office activities

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How can we reorganize these routine tasks loading them with sense
and giving back value to the teams?

How to load with sense, give back value?

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Chapter 7

Swordfish, polar bears, whales and top managers

Most current economic activities have to do with extracting goods,

and if they are not managed adequately they may generate waste. In
nature the very concept of waste cannot exist because every living
organism regenerates itself and an element that produces non-
recyclable toxic materials would be incompatible with life. Stress
management in companies can be equated with management of
surpluses in biological systems, preventing stress must be the very
first priority of every management committee.
When a plant is forced to produce too many seeds, it may have to
forgo photosynthesis, losing its ability to nourish itself and to survive.
The cells that make up the human body and those that make up an
ear of wheat are much more similar than we might believe. The basic
functions of human beings, of animals and of plants are practically
the same. Living beings know that they must maintain a balance of
energy in their cells.

Nature knows its limits and invariably transforms

them into strengths, into mechanisms for focusing
on goals. Pushing beyond, exceeding the ability of
a worker or of a system, doesn’t prove that such
limits don’t exist; it only proves that we can dodge
 them temporarily, at the cost of damaging
sustainable potential in the long term.
Seventy-five percent of the health problems we bring to our doctors
have their roots in stress at work; it is unthinkable not to try to reach
a better balance, where the value that we bring to the organization is
more proportional to that of which we deprive ourselves and our
families.

Materials like dioxin, contained in a large number of products that

have been on the market until very recently – the insecticide DDT for
example – are organochlorides, non-water-soluble artificial
combinations of hydrocarbon and chlorine. Being lipophilic, they tend
to build up in the fatty tissues of animals, so their concentration
increases exponentially toward the top of the food chain. Swordfish,
polar bears, whales – and top managers – accumulate toxins at
faster and higher levels than the rest of an ecosystem or an
organization. It is now well known that backaches, for example, are
much more common among directors than among workers who
endure hard physical labor. Work, in a broad sense, can absorb too
much of our social lives and consequently generate stress;
productivity may require, even if only at times, excessive
investments of energy. At the same time, work is one of the highest
and most creative efforts – meaning life-creating – that humans
engage in. How can we safeguard the organizations?

Life has some universal strategies, tricks that it uses often because
they always work well. One of these, for example, is to create its
chemical reactions in water. Be it in a plant or in our brain cells,
nature’s solvent, by definition, is water, a chemical substrate that
does not release toxic emissions. Can we be as simple as water,
move fluidly between the abilities of individuals and groups, create a
spirit of cooperation in which people naturally perform their best,
generously, without squeezing themselves to exhaustion and without
an excessive amount of supervision on the part of managers? Can
we cease to work ever harder and start working smarter, beginning
by taking apart all the unnecessary practices?

Can we, instead of asking ourselves what we can

do more, start asking what we can stop doing?
There are thousands of animals, insects, bacteria, flowers and plants
that have unexplored potential to inspire us to better organize our
companies and businesses. In fact, a great many problems have
already been dealt with and solved in nature. By conducting
biomimetic exploration we would be able to produce much more and,
above all, to free up enough time to reflect on what deeply inspires
us and what gives us energy each day. Today we define productivity
as the elimination of costs from a process, but only human capital
can bring about the success of the activity. Focusing on efficiency, on
cost-cutting, dooms our capacity to innovate and create new job
opportunities.

Designing organizations with nature’s wisdom in

mind means not asking ourselves how much we
can get out of a resource but asking instead how
much a resource has to offer.
Obtaining profits and generating growth are evidently to be
considered as means for reaching an end. The mission of a leader is
to handle the development of resources to increase the company’s
economic performance. Just as every redundancy in a natural
biological system is a resource, in a biomimetic organizational model
every excess takes on value. In biomimetic accounting, a resource is
used and then returned in a new and evolved shape and purpose, in
an endless cycle.

A modern company needs to evolve in terms of the

organizational assets that support the transition
 toward a naturally cyclical and regenerating
system.
Nature manages fluctuations in availability of resources simply by
doing more when more resources are available and doing less when
they are not. It is the second part of that equation in particular –
doing less when resources are scarce – that is particularly difficult to
accept in business. In nature, systems have developed resilience to
adversity, and in some ways a company or an organization is similar
to an organism: it takes resources from the environment, uses them
for production and then gives something back. An organizational
structure is a true ecosystem but in most cases it has not reached
the phase of complete maturity. Many organizations find themselves
producing, even if only temporarily, an extraordinary amount of
waste, especially in the form of layoffs that generate costs and
issues for the company itself as well as for the community, for
current and future generations. In this sense, prosperity and limits
are closely related; we have to find an organizational design that
recognizes limits and uses innovative capacity to re-invent. We have
to imagine organizations that exponentially increase efficiency by
improving people’s working conditions.

In nature, the transition from immature ecosystem to mature

ecosystem is called ecological succession; what we aspire to is a
sort of organizational succession: re-imagining work units as cyclical
aggregations of diversified resources that are able to regenerate on
their own, designing organizations that know how to best imitate
mature ecosystems. The best part of a reorganization process is not
eliminating the superfluous but evolving the organizational design.
Biomimicry at work
Back to the business card developed in Chapter 3

Main sources of stress

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Translate them into what we think are the

Most stressed resources

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For each one we commit in developing a sustainable recovery plan,

redefining:
- How much this resource can offer currently?
- How can we regenerate it back at a self-sustainable model?

Can we reorganize these resources differently and trigger an

“organizational succession”?
 Chapter 8

Diversification: mono-cultures, multi-cultures and

organizational grasslands

When a stable ecosystem is upset by a disturbance, such as a fire in

a forest, the organization tends to regress toward entropy, disorder
and possibly death. But in nature some pioneer species of
vegetation, grasses and bushes like cardoon and broom, then begin
to re-colonize the bare soil and spread rapidly. These species
stabilize the soil, preventing erosion and bringing nutrients up from
the subsoil. This recreates the conditions for the organization to
progress toward more mature and stable assets. When a company
structure is destroyed, what happens is more or less the same as
what happens with grassland: we can’t simply replant the same
species and expect them to rebuild the system.

There is no such thing as instant reorganization

just as there is no such thing as packets of instant
grassland seeds. In both cases, it’s a question of a
living organization in need of evolution, in need of
a history that develops over a period of years.
Some plants flourish, some talents leave the
organization, other species facilitate evolution and
 other talents make it possible for a new, effective
and efficient operation to develop.
The challenge for leaders is to facilitate this development over
relatively short time periods, we are not in the business of creating
prairies over the course of a few centuries; we endeavor to create
effective organizational ecosystems and sustainable performance
within the space of a few years.

Most corporate organizations tend to be too centralized, organized

by function and disconnected in silos, they are organizational charts
engineered to maximize a specific aim. In a natural grassland, on the
other hand, the plants that grow next to each other are also
complementary; they are not forced to compete the way they would
have to if they were growing next to identical plants. Their roots do
not intertwine in the search for water at the same depth, nor do they
compete for sunlight at the same height. They share the available
space and they share time and the seasons. Some species bloom,
spread their seeds and then disappear at the beginning of summer
to make room for others. Members of various communities are able
to grab the available resources, getting much more out of them than
they would be able to if forced into direct competition. A business
organization has a lot to learn from biodiversity in nature. In fact,
biology depends on diversity. It prospers with diversity but is stifled
by uniformity. Land used for intensive monoculture, when faced with
negative events such as insects, drought, hail or flooding,
immediately undergoes irreparable losses. In natural grassland,
changes are ever present but never catastrophic, because pests,
which always exist in an ecosystem, are kept under control by
biodiversity. The “grassland system” is naturally able to withstand
disturbances and to survive stress. The secret of natural
organizations is combining different species in a poly-cultural
organization able to withstand environmental and competitive
adversity. In the long term, monoculture is not sustainable, just as it
tends not to be in a company.
 Biological organizations are optimized as a whole.
They tend to be diversified and spread out,
symbiotic systems with densely interconnected
parts, not resistant, and adaptable to constant
changes.

To have an enduring grassland ecosystem we need at least eight

plant species with different characteristics, so it is likely that
something similar is necessary in the make-up of an organizational
grassland. In an organizational grassland a relationship that is
simultaneously competitive and collaborative is formed between the
various business units. In a biomimetic organization every unique
element must be compatible with a wide range of work systems, in
terms of ability, of physical presence, and of communication
networks through which information flows and is exchanged. Each
system finds the resources to live, nourish itself and stay healthy in
the diversity that ensures that there will always be some form of
success, even in highly diverse environmental and competitive
situations. Diverse organizations are wonderful creations that
contribute to something more than just the sum of their parts.
The characteristics that make a grassland perennial are the same
ones that make an organization sustainable: a crop of satisfactory
results, an effective front office on the surface, a stable and efficient
back office that knows how to protect the terrain and keep the
resources healthy at the base, an organic source of nutrients such
as a few grazing cattle or a finance company and – last but certainly
not least – a true bio-leader. Nature, animals, plants and organisms
are continuously evolving. They don’t simply occupy an environment,
but alter it and reorganize it constantly, developing structures that
are higher and higher in terms of order, hierarchy, complexity and
performance. But on the other hand, in poli-cultural environments,
management challenges are multiplied. The skills needed to
succeed in a highly diversified substrate are developed only with
time and managing such work teams requires advanced leadership.
Biomimicry at work

Let’s think about our organization, about the main cultures and
subcultures in it, e.g. the technical department culture, the IT culture,
the sales and the marketing ones, the finance community… We can
list them, ranking from the strongest and most influential

Main sub-cultures in the organization

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What are the main area of contact and cooperation among these
communities?

Cooperation
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And where they are competing against each other

Competition
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Are all those interactions contributing to create a healthy and

effective dynamic between the different business units?

Can we focus on areas where the balance between cooperation and

competition can further be evolved?

And other areas where these interaction tuned out to foster negative
relationships such as collusion or roadblocks that are damaging the
potential of the organization?

How can we evolve the organization chart, the processes and the
way of working to foster, avoid or pre-empt?
A faster and simpler bio-mimetic exercise: let’s quickly check if in our
organization we can find all the features that make a grassland
perennial:

A sustainable winning organization

a crop of satisfactory results
an effective front office
a stable and efficient back office
an organic source of talents
a true bio-leader

Can we tick all the five key features?

All? Some? None? Totally or partially?

Which initiatives and which re-organizations can strengthen our

organizational grassland?
 Chapter 9

Termites, plants, camels, the and quantum theory

Nature is gifted with incredible creative genius. Termite mounds, for

example, are studied in depth as examples of perfect natural
ventilation though nobody deliberately draws up the plans for them.
A system so complex cannot be understood as the simple sum of the
individual parts. The combination of all the individual movements on
the micro level results in an incredibly efficient yet unplanned macro-
system that is the result of the process of accumulation of the work
and skills of each individual insect, which spontaneously turns out to
be a shining example of efficiency.
On a possible parallelism with the evolution of organizations: to
reach a sustainable transformation, the role of the people and their
organization must be naturally complementary, a better organization
is also the result of the efforts of each individual component.
Insufficient organizational planning can end up forcing the structure
to absorb enormous unexpected mutations; on the other hand,
setting up an exhausting series of rules and procedures ends up
making results dependent on a very high number of elements, many
of which are uncontrollable, including first and foremost, issues that
are completely personal.

Dromedaries live in a arduously difficult desert environment. They

have developed a highly refined system for distributing moisture
throughout their entire bodies: they are equipped with highly intricate
nasal structures, called turbinates, formed of sponge-like bone,
covered in vessel-rich tissue, to reduce the distance between the
airflow and the center. In this way, the potential for heat dispersion
and humidity transfer is increased. In a business, the transfer of
information and the mobilization of resources for change could be
promoted by including teams of turbo-resources in the organizational
chart, acting as crucial information-carriers, with the task of reducing
the distances between the periphery and the center, promoting the
evolutive vision and ensuring coordination and alignment in a
consistent direction.

Capillary action is the natural process by which liquids

spontaneously move through narrow ducts in porous material
because of the intermolecular forces between the liquid and the
surface with which it comes in contact. Water in plants is carried by
vascular canals driven by the osmotic pressure in the capillaries.

In a biomimetic organization, information must be

able to flow like water. The distances between jobs
and work teams must be reduced to create a sort
of inter-organizational osmosis that pushes
information along the capillaries.
Managing change and learning to collaborate in a biomimetic
structure are tasks that require a high level of proximity and demand
mastery of the delicate art of knowing enough about others, their
work, their professionalism, their goals, to be able not so much to
give the exact answers as rather to ask the right questions.

Consistency is a hyper-organizational factor that can inject a

fantastical element into an organization or ordinary work team.
To better understand that, we extend for a while our sources of
inspiration entering in the field of physics: when the crystals in an
optical fiber are loaded with enough energy, they all spontaneously
start vibrating in the same direction and emit a highly concentrated
band of light. In supermagnets the magnetic micro-poles align, in
superfluids the synchronization of atoms manages to create a
completely frictionless system. According to quantum theory, atoms,
electrons or other particles can, in certain circumstances, be
synchronized even over great distances: this is the concept of
inseparability or non-locality. It implies that all objects that interacted
at any time remain connected in some way, that their waves,
regardless of how far away, remain linked in phase. There’s nothing
to do but ask ourselves: how can we reach superconductors’ level of
effectiveness in our businesses? What are the organizational
applications of quantum physics?
Biomimicry at work
In this exercise we will focus on the key information that are needed
for an efficient way of working in the organization. These information
can be the company mission, its values, objectives, strategies or –
more – business plans, intermediate results, risks, opportunities or
even the key innovative projects, the main change initiatives… Let’s
remind that our exercises are limited by the space on the back of a
business card so be simple, clear and prioritize the priorities.

Key strategic information

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Are all these details flowing across the organization through a

simple, clear and effective information flow?
Or shall we activate accelerators, turbo-resources, super-
conductors?

Accelerators, turbo-resources, super-conductors

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 Chapter 10

Releasing control: the nighttime surprises on

Richard Dawkin’s computer

In 1985, Richard Dawkins, zoologist and author of The Blind

Watchmaker, decided to explore the generative potential of
biological shapes through computer simulations. To do this, he
developed a very simple computer program that provided
instructions and parameters to develop shapes starting from a
completely random structure. Once launched, the program began
creating vaguely organic-looking shapes after only a few repetitions.
Dawkins just selected the most interesting developments and had
the program continue from that point, until he began to clearly
distinguish some of the shapes existing in nature. That night the
computer drew tulips, daisies and irises. The next morning he
decided to take a step back and have the computer start in a
different direction. Insects, spiders and flies began to appear on the
screen. Dawkins couldn’t tear himself away from the screen.
Changing the program’s basic instructions was like changing the
genes that produced slightly different individuals that, when
combined with the most promising selection of results, autonomously
arrived at the perfect solution. What would happen if, instead of
trying to draw tulips, spiders, pyramids or fruit trees, we decided to
set a few base parameters and let natural progress draw the best
business organizations?
 Drawing an organizational structure corresponds
to little more than tracing the lines that divide the
lanes of a highway to make circulation more fluid.
 As important and accurate as it may be, the
organization chart of a company is only a map, not
its territory. Organizations are entities based on
people, capable of refined interactions in a
complex environment.
Nature is a multi-tasker: human beings work, produce, evolve,
perceive situations, recognize new patterns as they emerge, adapt
and learn in real time, all at once. Projects based on the linear
procedures typical of traditional organizations have trouble adapting
with the same flexibility and speed, and this is why pyramids are
nothing but archeological finds. As we saw in the termite mounds in
the previous chapter, in nature a sort of intelligence of process
emerges spontaneously. In a biomimetic organization every work
team that interprets a project’s guidelines enriches it with a series of
minor variations: options are researched, messages translated,
some priorities are heightened until finally the signals sent back are
largely independent. A work team is not simply a series of on-off
switches but a sophisticated aggregate of individual decision
centers. A traditional procedure isn’t able to account for this level of
complexity and so it tends to flatten the human decision-making
process into simple yes-no, on-off flows.

Biomimetic organizations aren’t structurally

programmable, simply because they recognize that
human beings aren’t structurally programmable.
Life doesn’t just crunch numbers; it calculates
through feelings and reaches a decision through
emotions; from choosing a partner to approving an
 industrial investment plan, all our decisions are
largely emotional and far from rational.
Traditional organizations, with their capacity for carrying out
repetitive operations in an extremely effective way, are perfect in a
predictable competitive environment that can be modeled by a
relatively finite equation and managed by standard routines and
procedures. Mono-functional teams are extremely efficient at
resolving relatively simple tasks that can be explained in detail and
represented in flow charts. And they can be coordinated by even
moderately talented supervisors. A traditional pyramid organization
is an extremely reliable device, controllable and largely predictable.
A standardized team member just has to apply the procedures; any
supervisor can consult the handbook and implement processes that
allow him or her to carry out his or her work well. Sitting at the
summit of these organizations, one feels powerful, yet in reality
power has been traded for the illusion of control. And at a high price:

to ensure a certain level of repeatability and

control, traditional organizations are forced to
freeze a series of unpredictable side effects; this
tends to block their ability to evolve and makes it
very difficult to adapt to changing environmental
conditions.
By contrast, in biomimetic organizations, what would be the worst
nightmare of standard procedures becomes a source of
unsurpassable competitive advantages, based on the strategic
choice to advance by capitalizing on the unexpected. In a certain
sense, deep down, nature built its empire on mistakes that turned
out to be gold mines. Today economic changes are opening toward
infinite combinations that would knock even the most highly refined
procedures off balance; we need something more than simple
efficiency. In this new world where biological organizations exist, the
ability to ride the waves of myriad side effects and to try new
approaches becomes a critical factor for success. In these
conditions, easing up on the control mechanisms may reveal an
extremely strong form of organization where oxymorons fails: a
precisely approximate solution, rigidly flexible and able to handle an
infinite variety of opportunities with relative ease.

In a complex, competitive and rapidly evolving environment that

reacts and affects business’ strategies, multifunctional work teams,
while slightly less efficient, will certainly be more effective. In truth, in
a modern organizational design there is no other choice: we need
teams made up of different and diversified talents, teams that learn
quickly, whose relations are ever changing. The more complex a
task becomes, the more difficult the organization becomes to
coordinate centrally. The complexity of modern economic, political
and social systems has reached such a point that in order to
preserve power it is necessary to let go of the obsession with control,
give team members back their brains, limit the role of the
management to that of providing the substrate, the appropriate
environment, and letting workers adapt naturally to the constantly
changing environmental and economic conditions, without turning
too often to the hierarchy to arbitrate their decisions. Self-
improvement is a key element in a biomimetic organization and it
must be planned into the system, facilitated continually so that when
work teams encounter an obstacle, they know naturally how to
change their structure – and even their aims, if necessary – until
operations have become fluid and economically profitable again.
Biomimetic organizations need leaders who know how to create
value by finding the meaning in apparently random changes in the
environment, who know how to read situations in which the very idea
of perfection doesn’t exist. Directors who are like animals perfectly at
home in a forest, men and women who can understand that no two
areas of the wood are exactly alike, yet who recognize how a forest
can still leave an effective and harmonious impression. Leaders who
know how to progress from mono-functional organizations to
diversified, mixed, interconnected designs that allow people to work,
learn and live in close connection and proximity, creating vibrant
public spaces, cultivating diversity in age and culture, the mutual
support and ultimately the cohesiveness of the groups. In a fully
biomimetic organization, instead of being controlled from the outside,
every team melts with the very work it is carrying out; in working
together, the components sharpen their interdependence, their ability
to achieve results. They evolve through a process of variations and
adaptations to achieve excellent results, and in doing so they
naturally establish the best possible organizational structure for the
specific conditions of the economy and the market at the time.

To overcome the challenges of the future, we have no choice but to

organize ourselves by drawing inspiration from nature. New
evolutionary leaders may manage to increase organizational
effectiveness and efficiency to levels that are unimaginable at the
moment, designing flexible structures that can direct resources
toward emerging opportunities and adapt to the changes in
environmental conditions. A biomimetic organization calls for a
thorough rethinking of the content and meaning of leadership. Some
managers could find it difficult to accept that they are not the ones
coming up with the answers any more, that they do not know exactly
where each individual component of their team is, that they do not
even understand how their organization is carrying out such an
effective work. They will only have to provide the right conditions and
marvel at how well they function without intervention, without even
needing to understand exactly how or why. It may seem counter-
intuitive for those who have been trained in the traditional ways of
managing pyramidal companies, but today in any organization it is
necessary to let go of the control to maintain real power, the power
of adapting, achieving and prospering. A leader, a director, therefore,
limits himself to being the guide in the process, minimizing under-
performers and giving progressively more responsibility to the most
talented.
 The real challenge now is not to provide the
answers but rather to be able to describe the
expected results and then foster the organizational
environment that will drive the natural evolution of
the group toward performance.
A charismatic and innovative leader knows how to support the best
organization for a specific task and with specific people. A
biomimetic leader will be, above all, someone able to evolve
continually, with his or her organization.
Biomimicry at work

Effectiveness and efficiency: doing the right thing and doing it the
right way, with the best employ of resources.

Which teams in the organization are the best at both? Which ones
can still improve their effectiveness, their efficiency or both?

Teams that can improve effectiveness

...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................

Teams that can improve efficiency

...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................

Now we will not come with solutions: let’s get ready to release the
control.

Once we have chosen the teams that we will brief with requests to
increase efficiency or effectiveness, we shall just focus on defining
which substrates we will provide to simply trigger the powerful
natural process of self-improvement.
Chosen teams and objectives
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................

Substrates to be provided
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
 Chapter 11

Mobilizing the energies towards change: deserts,

penguins, leaders and conventions

In nature, heat is spread or transferred in four ways: by radiation,

evaporation, conduction and convection. The same four methods
can be adapted to the business economy.

The term radiation comes from the Latin radiare, to emit rays. In
physics, it refers to the waves and particles given off by matter. Heat
is a form of energy, and energy – both positive and negative, that is,
both motivation and stress – can be transferred by radiation.
Creating teams, processes and conditions that facilitate the creation
of energy waves allows motivation to radiate through the company.
Conversely, studying how to block them can help in understanding
how to block the radiation of stress. In nature, many organisms that
live in extreme climates have developed extremely effective
solutions for absorbing or releasing heat, ranging from the very
simple to the very complex. Some, for example, avoid absorbing
heat simply by staying in the shade, shielded from direct sunlight, or
by jumping across the sand to minimize absorption through
conduction. By contrast, the penguins of the Antarctic offer a simple
and effective example of behavior aimed at avoiding the loss of
precious heat radiation, by squeezing close together to minimize the
surface area exposed to the icy polar winds.
 Large multinational companies, though they may
be well-directed from the top and well-connected
on the micro level, are still highly diversified and
spread over a great area.
One of the main managerial and organizational
challenges is managing commitment to change,
particularly of those peripheral elements that have
less exposure to the vision that triggered the
change.

Evaporation, from the Latin ex-vaporare, meaning to change into

vapor, is the process of transformation from the liquid state to the
gaseous state. An overheated company needs to concentrate on
individual initiatives that promote the evaporation of stress into
organizational humidity that can then disperse as vapor. As long as
the Antarctic penguins decide to stay huddled together, their feathers
remain sealed and heat dispersion is reduced to a minimum around
their bodies. In the spring, the colony opens up and each bird puffs
up its feathers to increase the circulation of new and cool air. This is
an organizational behavior naturally based on the concepts of
radiation and conduction. We can think creatively about similar
concepts in our work teams, connecting them with weak ties that can
be opened to increase the circulation of information or “closed” to
reduce leaks.

By the conduction effect, heat is transferred in the form of

differences in temperature between adjacent regions, without
movement of matter. This is the same process by which sound
waves travel in the air, nerves transmit impulses and water is carried
through channels and pipes. Interestingly, the modern meaning of
conduction comes from an English extension of meaning of the
French term conduire – which in turn is derived from the Latin verb
conducere – the act of providing right of passage, a meaning that
survives today in the term “safe-conduct.” In the English-speaking
world, the meaning was immediately extended to guide, direct, lead,
and was made into nouns like manager and leader; to underline the
crucial role that biology itself assigns to a director in a
transformational process.

Convection is the most recent of the four concepts. Its origins

are in the mid 19th century as a derivation of the late Latin
convehere, con meaning “together,” and vehere meaning “to carry.”
In physics and biology, convection is the movement caused by a fluid
because of the tendency of warmer – and therefore less dense –
matter to rise, and that of cooler matter to fall, under gravity’s
influence. When this cycle is continuously repeated, the result is
what scientists call a convective flow. The similar modern term,
“convention” – from con and venire - also sounds awfully familiar in
the business world.
A convention can be a lot more than a traditional off-site meeting
where the management team meets those who are physically farther
away from the center – usually the sales network – to share
information, to become a continuous cycle from top to bottom and
back again, a kind of a convection cell, or a convective information
flow.

Inspired by nature, the traditional annual sales

meeting undergoes a transformation, evolving
from a convention to a convection, continuous and
open flows of information, real and true
association for ideas.
Biomimicry at work

Let’s go back to chapter 3 and chapter 9, where we worked on the

sources of stress in the organization and the system of strategic
information flowing across functional boundaries.

Main sources of stress

...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................

Key strategic information

...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................

How can we stop the stress, or how can we ease the flow of
information by activating organizational processes of

- radiation
- evaporation
- conduction
- convection
 Chapter 12

Where function and structure merge

Building meaningful interactions between the components of a work

group or of an entire organization evolves the structure itself into
what is called a reciprocal structure. In an organization we obtain a
reciprocal structure when each member supports and is supported
by the other members of the group, reaching performance levels that
would be impossible for the sum of the parts. The nests of some
birds are very interesting models of reciprocal structures: while most
fowl construct crude piles of twigs, held together simply by gravity
and friction, some species have gone so far as to knowledgeably
plan extremely articulated architectures to keep single elements
together. To be specific, when the distance between two twigs
exceeds the size of the longest stick available, these birds have
learned to utilize short twigs to construct a bridge that joins the two
extremes, thus creating the ideal area for the base of the nest. It’s a
feasible operation, as long as the individual pieces are placed with
the correct angle of incidence to each other. The same concept can
be put to use in organizations when the knowledge gap between two
functions exceeds the management ability of an individual manager
or of an entire work group. Defining the correct angle of incidence of
one person, group, function or business unit to another is actually
more art than science and represents the central core of the
discipline of biomimetic organizational architecture.
The fastest way to simultaneously increase effectiveness and
efficiency is to aim directly at the goal of obtaining a net change in
performance and then ensuring work teams the necessary resources
to achieve that. We can truly aim at increasing results tenfold, but to
obtain them we have to go all the way, to the concept of self-
assembling and custom-made organizations.

In nature, form is a synonym for function. Every

tree, every branch, every leaf evolves into the form
best suited to maximize effectiveness and
efficiency in the surrounding conditions. In
business organizations inspired by natural
ecosystems, we must create the conditions in
which diversity and diversification are pushed to
the point where function and structure merge.

The polymer conglomerate in abalone shells that we saw in a

previous chapter is much more than a simple natural mortar. In fact,
it is the very center of the system. When an abalone begins to build
its covering, it creates this polymer first. In a certain sense, nature
puts the mortar first and then the bricks. The polymeric structure is
the abalone’s organizational design, and defines the spaces that will
be filled. The mother-of-pearl bricks then self-assemble by a
chemical reaction in the salt water saturated with calcium and carbon
ions, conglomerating into calcium carbonate. The first layer creates
the conditions and influences the shape of the next one, and so,
starting from the initial polymeric design, the result is a shell with a
well-defined shape, perfectly adapted for the environment and for its
function. All through a process of self-creation that generates no
waste and no superfluous resources.
From the biomimetic point of view this means that if we concentrate
on designing the initial organizational structure properly, then the
organization will self-develop, structuring itself around the vision.
Self-assembly is one of nature’s most powerful tricks. Where we
spend enormous resources fabricating pyramids, nature makes
organizational structures grow simply by guiding them in a process
of self-construction. The result comes on its own, for free, without
additional effort. We still have so much to learn before we will even
partially realize this organizational dream. It will still take us decades
to achieve structures that develop themselves by spontaneous auto-
formation, but in the process of evolution from a pyramid to a fruit
tree, we will soon succeed in developing partial solutions and
intermediate generations, conventional organizational charts with
biomimetic business units or work teams.
Biomimicry at work

We start this exercise by writing on the back of a business card the

company vision : short, clear and simple.

Company vision
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................

We can reasonably assume that we are starting mostly from a

traditional organizational design. Therefore. the objective of evolving
the whole organization into a self-assembling structure can be a far
too ambitious. But nothing can stop us from creating the conditions
to achieve early wins: which organizational cells are the most
advanced towards strategic awareness and self-determination ?
What teams have been brilliant in performances, both effective and
efficient in achieving their objectives?

Fittest teams
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................

Pick one (or a few) and let them elaborate on how – based on the
company vision stated above – they intend to describe their focused
mission, i.e. how the team will commit in contributing to realize the
company vision.

Team’s mission
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................

Then, let’s ask to the same team to think about the most fitting
organizational structure – team’s design, processes, people, time,
financial resources – they need to be in the best position for
delivering their self-defined mission.

Maybe you would like to provide the team with a business card that
reminds the minimalism biomimicry principle we discovered in
chapter 4

Beauty in nature often derives from economy of

resources. The absence of the superfluous is part
of the elegance and of the precision that we
perceive.
And let them self-assemble into…

The most essential biomimetic team structure

...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
 Chapter 13

Brackish lagoons and greenhouses in the desert:

from sustainable to regenerating organization

Put in very simple terms, a tidal lagoon is an artificial structure that

encloses an area of coastline affected by tides, activating water
turbines and generating electricity by taking advantage of the sea’s
movements. It’s not a pure natural set-up but a man-made biomimic
organization. While the primary function of these structures is to
generate low-cost electricity, their benefits cover a much wider
range. From the most obvious, production of affordable non-polluting
energy, we move on to positive economic and social impact on local
communities, and finally to the almost magical point of triggering the
processes of regeneration of the surrounding environment. A tidal
lagoon can rapidly become a true biological turning point by
encouraging regeneration of the natural areas around it, including
forests of mangroves, coral reefs and marine biodiversity in general.

A very similar effect was observed when greenhouses and farms

were built in the desert. The very same lands that had invariably
been dry, empty and desolate before the project were rapidly
surrounded by new vegetation (In fact, most of the deserts on earth
supported moderate amounts of vegetation in relatively recent times
and could easily do so again if favorable conditions were created).
All of this often happens and becomes self-sustaining in surprisingly
short time, even less than a year.

The reason we are talking here about tidal lagoons and greenhouses
in the desert is that these structures take the level of responsiveness
to the environment a step forward, toward the concept of
regeneration.

These artificial systems created by man

demonstrate how far we can go beyond current
goals in our organizations, to aim directly at
spontaneous and sustainable regeneration.
A well-planned biomimetic organization should be able to produce
slightly more than what is necessary for its prosperity and
sustainability, enough to finance all the components in it, all the way
up to the organizational systems around and the communities that
host it. This result, combined with a good dose of emulation that
successes always bring with them, could cause incredible side
effects, could incite an organizational system to continue growing
and expanding, broadening the opportunities created for the
company, for the individuals, for the community and ultimately for
society as a whole.
It’s likely that we’ll begin to see more and more organizations like
this in the future, in all sectors: sustainable organizations, naturally
responsive to the surrounding environment, regenerative systems
that will have minimal impact on existing resources and will offer
impressive benefits by developing a wider holistic vision of the
concept of progress.
Biomimicry at work

Let’s focus on interconnections between functions : which ones are

the key success drivers in our company ?

Key interconnections between functions

...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................

Let’s extend beyond our organizational boundaries.

Key external interconnections

...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................

Are all of those effective and efficient ? Which initiatives can we launch to
further improve ?
 Chapter 14

A compass and a map for migrating in a

biomimetic organization

The simple fact of being reading this paper is already a factual first
step toward the development of biomimetic organizations, but now
we need to map out the course more completely. The process of
transformation from a traditional organization to a sustainable and
self-adapting biomimetic one requires effort to change perspective in
the planning of the organization itself. Creating conditions favorable
for the development of interconnected and inter-functional
organizations is a unique operation that must be custom-made to fit
each company, and it requires great commitment. It would be an
oversimplification to claim to provide generic recipes guaranteeing
success in such a multifaceted task. On the other hand, supplying
oneself with a compass and a map, while not being an absolute
guarantee of bringing the ship safely into the port of destination, can
make for much smoother sailing. Having a list, even an incomplete
one, of things to remember can help by providing a rough vision of
the potential problems and possible opportunities that we will
encounter in the implementation.

The good news is that we’ll have a lot of help, we

are literally surrounded by geniuses and learning
from them is just a question of stopping to observe
 and reflect: nature’s good sense will appear to us
as if by magic.
Guiding the change to biomimetic organization can be an extremely
stimulating task. We think that at least the following considerations
must be taken into account:

1. All the main challenges of the organization or the company

must be reworked and dealt with in functional terms, then
explored creatively by researching how similar functions are
carried out effectively in nature.

2. Hierarchies, work teams and individual positions must be

planned as closely interconnected elements that
maximize the effectiveness of the organizational plan.

3. The most important resources must be allocated to key places,

to be used most effectively; the best talents must be used to
foster the development of people and
performances, not to reach immediate results by burning out
the best energies.

4. In the first steps of a reorganization, the ideal solution and the

necessary resources might not yet be available. In this case it
is effective to focus on preparatory steps that will
subsequently make it possible to move to a higher level.

5. It is necessary to be able to observe the old organization from

new perspectives, to understand where there are
unexplored resources. Once superfluous, unused or
underused resources have been identified, they must be
reinterpreted as opportunities, with a bit of ingenuity to find the
pieces that can be transformed from waste into value.
 6. Once the base cells of the new organization have been
planned, it becomes a question of spreading the vision to the
entire system, connecting with new communication
methods, adding resources, facilitating information flow.

7. The synergy between functions can be researched through

analysis of the resources and commitments of each one,
defining for each organizational unit how to seize the
opportunity to become a net resource provider
instead of a consumer.

8. The organization and its interconnections must be designed to

remain always adaptable to the specificities and
contingencies of the market, to grab all the ever-changing
opportunities.

9. It is necessary to open up to external synergies,

reconsidering conventional approaches to the resources,
exploring opportunities to rent services instead of purchasing
products. In nature, symbiosis is often extremely effective; the
fiercest competitor can rapidly become the best ally.

10. Once the first cycle of reorganization has been completed,

the changes themselves will have generated new and further
opportunities; it is necessary to continue exploring in search of
new and even more radical increases in effectiveness
and efficiency.

Nature’s teachings are simple: we need constant research,

permanent advancement toward better and better combinations.
Some progress happens over a relatively short time and may seem
like a revolution. Other times, incremental changes are smaller and
slower, but the underlying concept is the same: the migration
process in a biomimetic organization will not move forward in leaps,
but rather will gently direct its wandering, like tree sap, to arrive
naturally and fluidly at its achievements.

Life doesn’t work according to a detailed and

predefined plan. It simply and tirelessly chases the
goal of perpetuating itself through a continuing
series of adaptations to the surrounding
environment. And as it evolves it also changes the
environment. Every time a phase is complete, new
possibilities open up. The progression continues
forever simply because stopping would be a waste
of resources.
Biomimicry at work

Developing a biomimetic organization is a custom-made complex

process that shall be fit to each company, nevertheless we can start
by a draft list, even if simplified this exercise can give an idea of the
potential problems and possible opportunities that we will encounter.

Rework the main organizational challenges in functional terms, to

explore how similar functions are carried out effectively in nature.

The 5 key organizational challenges

1
2
3
4
5

Re-described in functional terms

1
2
3
4
5

Wining examples of similar functions in nature

1
2
3
4
5

Bio-mimetic inspiration and ideas

1
2
3
4
5

Hierarchies must be planned as closely interconnected to maximize

effectiveness. Let’s go back to chapter 13:

Key interconnections between functions

...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................

Key resources must be allocated to develop people and

performances, let’s be careful not to focus on immediate results only,
at the risk of burning out the best energies.

Key Talents
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................

Key Positions
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................

Is there a fit? Are all best talents covering key positions?

In developing this exercise you will probably have discovered that

some of the necessary resources might not yet be available. In this
case, let’s focus on preparatory steps that will unlock potential and
subsequently make it possible to move to a higher level.

Preparatory steps
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................

Explore the organization from a new perspective: where can we find

superfluous, unused or underused resources to be reinterpreted as
opportunities?

We can leverage the work already done in chapter 5 and with a full
knowledge of the methodology dive deeper:

Wasted, redundant or under-utilized resources…

...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................

… re-cycled as new growth generators

...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................

Once the basic cells of the new organization have been planned, it
becomes a question of spreading the vision to the entire system.
Let’s go back to the work done in chapters 9, 10 and 11.

Key strategic information

...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................

Accelerators, turbo-resources, super-conductors

...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................

Synergies between functions must be fostered, each organizational

unit shall become a net resource provider to the overall organization.
Let’s check, function by function or at least for the key functions:

The 5 key functions

1
2
3
4
5

Resources used and their sources

1
2
3
4
5

How are they used and outcomes

1
2
3
4
5

Efficient? Yes/No
1
2
3
4
5

How to become net resource provider

1
2
3
4
5

The organization and its interconnections must be designed to

remain adaptable and grab all the ever-changing opportunities in the
market.
Expected business scenario in next 3-5 years
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................

Re-organization needed to grab the opportunities

...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................

Reconsider conventional approaches to the resources, exploring

opportunities to rent services instead of purchasing products, look for
synergies, the fiercest competitor can become the best ally.

Key competitors
1
2
3
4
5

How to become allies

1
2
3
4
5
Once the first cycle of reorganization completed, the changes
themselves will have generated new and further opportunities; it is
necessary to re-start from the beginning, to continue exploring in
search of new and even more radical increases in effectiveness and
efficiency.
 Chapter 15

To be continued…

An adult can recognize and identify on average about one thousand

commercial brands, but slightly fewer than ten trees and plants. In
our minds, thousands of artificial images have formed and we’ve lost
contact with most of the living things that have surrounded us since
birth. We have an incredible lack of familiarity with nature’s
vocabulary. So in a certain sense, advancing will mean going back to
connecting with what has always been there and what we have only
temporarily forgotten.

If we consider our vision of the world from a wider

perspective than just the last century, biomimicry
is not an experiment or a temporary exception but
indeed the rule of life for the human race.
In the words of the poet Wendell Berry : “The world… that is around
us, is also within us. We are made of it; we eat, drink, and breathe it;
it is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. It is also a Creation, a
holy mystery, made for, and to some extent by, creatures, some but
by no means all of whom are human."

A complete biomimetic organization is nothing but a mature

ecosystem. It uses the locally available resources efficiently and
sparingly, recognizes diversity and cooperation, adapts to local
conditions and local knowledge. It embraces disruptive innovations
and accepts failures as necessary steps in the evolution toward
greater structures. It remains in economic balance in the social
biosphere that surrounds it, reaches substantial reductions in the
resources necessary for its prosperity through radical increases in
efficiency, uses and at the same time regenerates resources that will
last indefinitely. It generates, in turn, resources compatible with a
wide range of other diverse systems. It resists adversity and fully
grasps all the opportunities around it in continuing evolution because
of the diversity of its components and the formation of broad
networks of connections. It operates based on information and not
on power. It diversifies easily and cooperates in wider meta-
organizations. At its most complete level, a biomimetic organization
will be naturally resilient, not stressful, restorative, self-generating. It
will be an inexhaustible source of positive energy.

It is often stated that in recent years the world has

been facing a deep economic crisis. It is not so
much a crisis as a radical transformation. We are
on the threshold of a different times, different
economies and different organizations. These new
times need a new script, the traditional pyramid
organizations are doomed, a fruit tree era is on its
way to stimulate the imagination of a more
sustainable future in our work and in our lives.
Some skills will become less important and others will be ever more
in demand because they will represent a way to harmonize our
economic needs with natural systems’ capacity for sustenance. We
have to consider the entire range of social values and make them
the principles that will guide the biomimetic organizations of
tomorrow. We must evolve toward innovation, organizational
planning and cooperation. We will try new solutions that will fail: we
must try to understand rather than trying to explain.

At first, these changes will naturally be carried forward by small work

teams rather than spread to entire organizations. Biodiversity in
these micro-groups will be encouraged through a series of incentives
to free the imagination, the courage and the commitment that
naturally inspire individuals who want to make a difference. Finding
the balance that will be able to regenerate the economy and society,
companies and the communities that surround them, working time
and private life, employees and the men and women behind them, is
an aim that demonstrates how desperately the productivity of our
organizations needs to be increased. Biomimicry can reveal itself to
be an inexhaustible source of inspiration, but developing such a
transformative approach may seem far from being possible or
realistic. Can we aim to reduce the work required by a company by
80% or are we dreaming beyond what reasonable progress can
hope? Let’s try to consider just one example: today most information
technology is still in the embryonic phase and will continue to be
developed significantly as it reaches maturity. If we consider that this
factor alone could exponentially increase the development of
symbiotic organizations and collaborative work teams, then our goal
of 80% becomes less incredible.

This brief essay offers different approaches to organizational

evolution, all inspired by biological examples existing in nature. One
of the recurring points in it, is the elimination of waste. This
represents not only a savings of resources but above all a radical
rethinking of the relationships between the resources themselves,
from a linear flow to a cyclical one. We have to subvert the traditional
incentive systems, to create accounting systems that support and
reinforce regenerative performance. We have to be able to imagine a
company where working less will be a source of greater satisfaction,
will be more interesting and even more financially secure and
fulfilling.
 It will be a rich company, yet at the same time
curiously frugal, where every seed will be a
treasure and generating waste will be considered
an atrocious offense.
Living organisms, thanks to the unrelenting refinements of the
evolutionary process, are exceptional models from which we can
learn how to obtain radical increases in efficiency in our use of
resources. Some of the solutions presented in this paper have
already been tested and have already taken root in current
organizations, but what the biomimetic approach suggests is a new
and different perspective through which we can re-envision problems
and opportunities, a complete framework that promotes the type of
integrated thinking we’ll need more and more in the future. At this
level, biomimicry is organizational engineering that becomes
architecture, poetry, art.
Biomimicry at work

Let’s imagine how our organization could look like if we could

increase productivity by 80%, grow our results by 80% and reinvest
all in creating 80% more resources. Which radically new objectives
we would set? Which strategies? Which organizational designs?

The “power” company

...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................

The simple business card here above should be the vision that will
energize all the organization to enter into an entirely new storytelling,
using new roadmaps, and take a courageous path of biomimicry and
organizational innovation.
 Acknowledgements and disclaimer

This brief essay owes a great deal to Biomimicry in Architecture, a

brilliant work both in form and in content, full of ideas and beautiful
illustrations. Without the inspiration of Michael Pawlyn these
thoughts would never have existed. But if you asked me how I came
to develop what you’ve just read, you would find me truly stumped. I
am just a salesman and a marketer, I am not a human resources
manager or an organizational consultant; neither a biologist or an
engineer. Actually I do not know how I managed to think out and
write these pages, in a certain sense I was not the one who wrote
them, nature did it. I only read some books, glimpsed some ideas,
joined some concepts as if connecting the dots, and evolved them
into something different, possibly new, and hopefully interesting.
Frankly, I did not have an exact idea of what I was about to write as I
went along. I read, took notes, typed at the keyboard, reread,
rewrote; I had the support of a wonderful wife and a brilliant business
psychologist all in one, the assistance of a very talented translator,
and the online support and advice of some biomimicry leaders
around the world. That’s how concepts took shape. Chapters fell into
order almost on their own creating a new combination in a
biomimetic and spontaneous process. In the end, I believe that
creativity consists simply in managing to connect ideas. The poet
T.S. Eliot, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948, wrote,
“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.” Being a poet, Eliot
knew how to choose his words carefully; I would like to think that we
have created a selectively stolen work, not just a second-rate
imitation.

The Ecology of Commerce © Paul Hawken 1993, 2010

Orbiting the Giant Hairball © Gordon Mackenzie 1998
Biomimicry, Design Inspired by Nature © Janine Benyus 2002
Biomimicry in Architecture © Michael Pawlyn 2011
http://biomimicry.net/
www.asknature.org

Last but not least, I would like to thank Michel Wolfstirn of

BiomimicryNorway for the time taken in reading and advising the
revised version of this paper. If this second edition is not only free of
typos but most of all more fluid and coherent in its contents this is
thanks to Michel generosity: a value that is, still today, priceless.
 Written in Paris, between August 2013 and July 2014
Translation from Italian by Meaghan Toohey
© ft 2014

Second Edition revised and enriched with biomimicry exercises written in

Paris, January 2016
© ft 2016

ISBN-13: 978-1505420807