John Seely Brown on bio-inspired design

“[A] lot of stuff that we’re thinking about doing now is in new types of material science, nano-science, nano-mechanisms, what I call bio-inspired design. That is what can we really learn from nature’s secrets in order to build interesting things. This is not bio-mimicry, this is actually trying to understand what are the messages about how animals actually work, rather than how shells actually form. What can we learn from really understanding how a gecko can do these amazing feats. We’ve learnt a lot recently and built some amazing machines based on that. It’s very interesting in how, you know you get inspired on one domain and with the act and play of imagination take those ideas into something else. It’s not just building an analogy, it’s doing something else.” John Seely Brown

Exert from my research into design and innovation