We were honoured to get the invitation to speak at the first Biocene Tools Workshop arrange by the NASA Virtual Interchange for Nature-inspired Exploration (V.I.N.E.) at NASA Glenn Research Center (Cleveland, OH).

One the same panel was Greg Horowitt from T2 Venture Capital as we both talked about the value of looking to industry and delivering value.

Our presentation focused on how we can uncover the unmet needs' of the client/customer/service to deliver value, not just through disruptive innovation but by developing a Blue Ocean Strategy.  We have noticed that industry isn't picking up biom* (the collective name for bionics, biomimicry, biomimetics, etc) as much as many have hoped. Why is that?

Two reasons. One is that many who practice biom* are underskilled in the markets they work and push for biom* to be the first method of problem-solving. WRONG, it still easier to adopt from other industries, or even steal/borrow/licence/buy from your competitors. 

The second reason is fundamental. It takes a great deal of time to look into biological research and identify what exact function that you can the principles from. You also need to hire someone with knowledge of life sciences and integrate them into your team/process. To industry, this delay of 6-12 months is astronomically expensive and risky. Secondly, replacing a function is wrong. Not in the natural world works in isolation, it is polyfunctional.

There is no model (or platform) out with academia that is fully formed to tackle these challenges at present. Many of the presenters have models within academia that are working but need the input from the university. One is a bright light at that is the network analysis model developed by GeorgiaTech. This one example of an analytical tool that can produce replicable results. There is another tool that is built into our model that will achieve similar results and cut out the need for knowing any biology, instead you focus on not one function that you have a problem with, but the competing desires between functions - the tradeoff. People will say what about Asknature? This is a great resource, but it does not allow you to find those solutions in a systematic manner based on complex interrelationships in the natural world. The team behind this know that as well. We wouldn't be on the advisory board and help shape it if it was perfect!

This working model flows as follows based on the Jobs-to-be-Done Framework and combines TRIZ, Blue Ocean Strategy and Stagegate analysis to find ways to find solutions by looking tradeoffs in engineering and biology.

In next weeks blog, we will describe the process in more detail. Here is a link to the presentation.

If you would like to discuss how we can help you solve problems and deliver biomimetic solutions, please get in touch and we can grab a coffee.