The Biomimicry Institute is embarking on a 10-year vision to dramatically scale the impact of biomimicry on the biggest challenges facing the world today. Since its founding 20 years ago, the organization has worked to spread the practice of looking to solutions developed by living organisms over billions of years for insight and inspiration toward effective, efficient, and sustainable innovations. Now working systematically across sectors and disciplines, the Institute aims to make the brilliance of the natural world and all living systems actionable knowledge. To ensure biomimicry draws from the fullness of human knowledge, the Institute partners ethically and equitably with individuals and groups informed by both traditional Indigenous knowledge and academic sciences.
Why this matters: Three interconnected crises—climate change and biodiversity loss, human disconnection from nature, and the harmful “take, make, waste” approach—recognize that nature has already solved versions of these problems over billions of years of evolution. By working to make nature’s genius actionable knowledge across sectors rather than a niche design philosophy, the Institute positions biomimicry as a systematic infrastructure for innovation rather than occasional inspiration. The commitment to partnering ethically with both Indigenous knowledge holders and academic scientists acknowledges that nature’s lessons have been observed and applied by diverse human traditions, and that thoughtful urgency requires collaboration that honors multiple ways of knowing.
