Biomimicry: the logical extension of Design Thinking?

Since the 1950s, several progresses have been made to foster creative thinking inside the companies: problem-solving mindset, brainstorming, ideation, human-centric behavior… The premises of Design Thinking were born.

In 1991, David Kelley truly democratized and galvanized Design Thinking when he founded IDEO, a new global design company that provides business consultancy based on the main principles of that new method: creativity, inspiration, ideation, prototype, test, iteration and implementation through human-centered brainstorming and collaboration. Design Thinking has disrupted the way companies undertake innovative processes, until it has become nowadays an approach commonly adopted and used in every organizations.

As IDEO describes the Design Thinking mindset: "To think like a designer requires dreaming up wild ideas, taking time to tinker and test, and being willing to fail early and often. The designer's mindset embraces empathy, optimism, iteration, creativity, and ambiguity. And most critically, design thinking keeps people at the center of every process. A human centered designer knows that as long as you stay focused on the people you're designing for—and listen to them directly—you can arrive at optimal solutions that meet their needs."

"Design Thinking isn’t just a method, it fundamentally changes the fabric of your organization and your business." (David Kelley, Founder of IDEO)

Like Design Thinking, biomimicry is an approach that aims at finding innovative solutions to our current needs and at increasing performance of the organizations.

Biomimicry even goes further than Design Thinking on some points:

• The biomimetic mindset is not only a human-centered one, but an organism-centered one, which expands the scope of possibilities in terms of ideation, inspiration, creativity, ambiguity, etc.
• Biomimicry embraces a topic Design Thinking does not tackle directly: sustainability. Biomimicry helps to develop creative and sustainable solutions inspired by nature. It is a crucial point for companies as they need to be more and more responsible and to show publicly that they fulfil their duties and obligations in terms of respect of the society and the environment.

It has taken approximately twenty-five years for Design Thinking since its popularization in the 1990s to become an unmissable approach and way of thinking (integration to business consultancy, development of specialized trainings, courses and schools specialized in Design Thinking, etc.). If biomimicry follows the same evolution – and as biomimicry was popularized in 1997 – it would also become an inescapable method and strategy in the next few years. The sine qua none condition to ensure the success of biomimicry is the emergence of a new wave of bio-designers and bio-problem-solvers using structured methodologies and tools.

The Biomimicry Institute has already developed a "Biomimicry Toolbox" that focuses on "The Biomimicry Design Process" and its iterative "Biomimicry Design Spiral" (see the figure below). Source: https://toolbox.biomimicry.org/methods/process/

The Biomimicry Institute also shows how biomimicry can be brought into the Design Thinking framework (see the figure and its description below). Source: https://toolbox.biomimicry.org/methods/other/

"In this image we have modified a Design Thinking diagram used by the Hasso Plattner Institute for Design (aka "d.School") at Stanford University, to show how biomimicry concepts can fit into the framework. Whereas design thinking emphasizes beginning the design process with empathy for users, in a biomimetic concept we could extend that concern to include all life. During the "define" step you would identify the function and context necessary for the solution and formulate questions for biology research. The "ideate" step then includes searching biology for inspiration, translating strategies, and considering nature’s unifying patterns. And finally, the "test" step includes evaluating whether the resulting design is ultimately life-friendly."

Some organizations and consulting firms specialized in biomimicry principles and applications are developing practical biomimetic pathways. The common efforts of these early biomimetic adopters are crucial to make biomimicry the next essential creative, interdisciplinary and complementary approach and mindset to other innovation methodologies.