BioInspired! So What? Now What!

After a year's absence, the BioInspired! newsletter has re-surfaced.  This issue includes a perspective on the BID Community, interviews with Brett Joseph and Shoshanah Jacobs, an article on the essential elements of biomimicry and an overview of the BioM Innovation Database.

This newsletter is publicly readable - click on the titles below to read the full articles.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to the newsletter!

The BID Community is at a crossroads.  In hindsight, the original concept of creating a "space" where current and aspiring practitioners, facilitators and people knowledge about the human condition could share ideas appears to have been premature.  We have had little success in reaching out to the broader community and BID Community activity has been steadily declining.  It is not clear that we even meet the criteria of a community.  Although the Internet allows us to 'meet' virtually, the energy generated through face-to-face discussions seems to dissipate quickly when we return to our 'day jobs'.  We share an interest in the concepts of biomimicry, biomimetics and bio-inspired design (B3D for short) but adopt a diverse set of approaches in applying these concepts.  This is in itself not an issue but makes it challenging to identify common attitudes, interests and goals.

The international and interdisciplinary BID Community team collaborated on developing an entry for the 2011 International Algae Competition in the Algae Landscape Design category.  The team decided to take a problem-driven approach, developing a bio-inspired systems solution involving algae that would address important problems associated with a particular place: Haiti both before and after the devastating earthquake of 2011.