The Biomimicry Institute
Overview
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Posted Opportunities 0
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Founded Since 2006
Company Description
Humanity’s Biggest Challenges.
Nature’s Proven Solutions.
We are the bridge between biology and design, advancing the adoption of nature-inspired strategies to help solve the most pressing problems of our time.
CHOOSE YOUR BIOMIMICRY PATH
Whether you are a student, parent, educator, entrepreneur, or a concerned citizen, you have found your place in advancing regenerative solutions. You can begin your journey by following one of the pathways below to connect with nature and bring biomimicry into your life.
- Explore nature’s strategies and learn how to apply them to problems.
- Spread nature’s wisdom through professional learning opportunities.
- Change culture and business by bringing solutions to market.
Biomimicry is a practice that learns from and mimics the strategies found in nature to solve human design challenges—and find hope.
Biomimicry offers an empathetic, interconnected understanding of how life works and ultimately where we fit in. It is a practice that learns from and mimics the strategies used by species alive today. After billions years of research and development, failures are fossils, and what remains hold the secret to our survival. The goal is to create products, processes, and systems—new ways of living—that solve our greatest design challenges sustainably and in solidarity with all life on earth. We can use biomimicry to not only learn from nature’s wisdom, but also heal ourselves—and this planet—in the process.
Biomimicry provides the blueprints that can be adapted across context, industries, and be scalable to address the needs.
Biomimicry is about valuing nature for what we can learn, not what we can extract, harvest, or domesticate. In the process, we learn about ourselves, our purpose, and our connection to each other and our home on earth.
About the Biomimicry Institute
We are on a mission to help solve humanity’s biggest challenges through the adoption of biomimicry (nature-inspired innovation) in education, culture, and industry.
For eons, nature has solved its problems with well-adapted designs, life-friendly chemistry, and smart material and energy use. We exist to shine a light on nature’s genius, and bridge pressing design challenges with proven biological strategies for a better future.
Our initiatives across education, innovation, inspiration, and systems change have empowered thousands with the tools and training necessary to create a healthier world, and to improve their lives in the process. To amplify our impact, we unite a global network of educators, innovators, changemakers, scientists, and others passionate about solving environmental and social challenges through nature-inspired design.
Our work will not be complete until biomimicry is at the core of the human experience and the sustainable health of the planet is secure.
OUR INITIATIVES
Education
STEM + Nature = Transformative Learning
We develop biomimicry curriculum, educational programs, and run design challenges to equip K-12 learners with the interdisciplinary tools and mindset they need to address problems using the teachings of nature.
Our Youth Design Challenge for middle and high school students turns learners into nature-inspired makers familiar with Next Generation Science Standards, while our K-5 Education Program utilizes biomimicry principles to boost STEM learning and engagement at a key development stage.
Inspiration
Curiosity + Nature = New Possibilities
We believe a regenerative future starts when we AskNature, so we created AskNature.org, the largest open-source database of biological strategies for sustainable innovation. AskNature bridges the knowledge gap that prevents problem solvers from looking to biology as a source for radically sustainable solutions. With nearly 2,000 expertly-curated strategies and counting, the site is an invaluable tool in our mission to make it possible for anyone, anywhere, to discover, learn, and practice biomimicry.
Innovation
Business + Nature = Sustainable Solutions
Biomimicry Launchpad is a 10-week incubator program that equips help scientists, inventors, and innovators accelerate the growth of biomimetic technology in order to create scalable solutions to systemic environmental and social challenges.
The Ray of Hope Prize identifies the most promising nature-inspired startups in the world—across industry—and accelerates their growth through green business training, brand amplification, and $100,000 in equity-free funding for the winner.
Systems Change
Collaboration + Nature = Transformation
Design for Decomposition is a two-year, multi-million dollar project dedicated to demonstrating scalable new pathways for the ~92 million tonnes of fashion waste discarded annually by embracing true decomposition—the way leaves break down into soil—that builds healthy ecosystems.
The initiative originated from the 2020 Nature of Fashion report, which identified decomposition as a critical part of nature’s material cycles missing from current industrial thinking, and design for decomposition as the quickest route to a regenerative and equitable fashion industry.
“We envision a world in which people view nature not as a warehouse of goods but as a storehouse of knowledge and inspiration.”
– Janine Benyus, founder
THE BIOMIMICRY INSTITUTE
GENERAL INFO
- info@biomimicry.org
- +1 415 800 1401
- EIN: 86-1153859
English