Projects and Initiatives

The Biomimicry Switzerland team is involved in a number of local and regional initiatives, both independently and in collaboration with other organizations. Our projects are designed to accelerate the education, development and practice of biomimicry in Switzerland and demonstrate the viability of applying biomimicry to unique challenges in our community. They also serve as catalysts to build the capacity of both Swiss and international communities to learn and practice biomimicry across various sectors of society and economy.

Biomimicry Business Intelligence

Successful biomimicry businesses now reflect nature’s successes in a variety of products from Velcro fasteners to fast vehicles.  While the field is just emerging, in 15 years biomimicry could contribute $300B [in 2010 dollars] annual U.S. gross domestic product (Dr. L. Reaser, PLNU, 2010).  Biomimicry Business Intelligence™ provides economic and financial research reports, in-depth market and product analysis for the financial community and government institutions.  The first series of biomimicry business case studies and market trends reports are available at: Biomimicry Business Intelligence.

Applying nature’s models and principles to human problem solving consistently delivers elegant ways of achieving both economic and environmental goals.  Nature’s successes – streamlined structures, highly efficient mechanisms, and zero-waste strategies that are sustainable in closed systems -- are transforming how we think about designing, producing, storing, transporting and distributing goods and services.  Worldwide, biomimicry is gaining central consideration in ambitious projects including city planning and high-speed rail. To keep pace with population growth in the next 15 years, innovative jobs creation for 600 million people is urged by international analysts, and biomimicry is noted for its economic potential (2013 Development Reports by Kauffman Foundation, UN and World Bank).  Venture capitalization of biomimicry businesses will secure this innovative sector’s global economic growth and profitability to investors. 

Finance 3.8: A Biomimicry Design Challenge for Financial Architecture

Biomimicry can be applied to products, processes, or systems.  We focus not only on emulating nature's genius in the design of investment products and processes, but also in the design of the financial system itself.  How would nature design a financial system?  The best answer we have to this question so far is: community credit (see "bio-credits" below).  That said, biological design can inform financial architecture at all level from community credit to global finance policy.  Researchers from the Bank of England and the University of Oxford, for example, designed recommendations linked here for the decentralisation of risk management strategies in banking regulation by studying the connections within food webs and how viruses spread through networks.  Finance is a complex adaptive system, and the natural world is the ultimate authority on designing complex adaptive systems that are regenerative over the long term within the operating conditions of this planet.  There is much to learn from living systems to help monetary and financial architects achieve the same qualities in our financial system that we so admire in natural systems.  Biomimicry Switzerland is evolving the discussion of how to make our financial system function as if it were an organ of ecology.

Bio-credits and the Biomimicry Exchange Network (BXN)

We work with the Bio-credits Working Group of the Biomimicry Global Network (BGN), which is designing and implementing a long-term "self-funding" strategy for the global biomimicry community.  The strategy is premised on gradually shifting the weight of our economic dependence out of bank credit and into community credit to the extent that we can over time.  Community credit is the model of exchange that is most consistent with biological design principles, or the design of mature biological systems.  

The video to the right provides an overview of community credit from a biomimicry perspective, an explanation of our long-term "self-funding" strategy, and a demonstration of the Biomimicry Exchange Network (BXN) (http://biomimicry.communityforge.net), our first prototype of a mutual credit facility for this community.  Biomimicry Switzerland administers this facility on behalf of the global network.

Principles of Ethical Biomimicry Finance

Ethical Biomimicry Finance™ (EBF) is an investment methodology and due diligence framework for identifying biomimetic technologies and innovative companies that are accelerating the development and commercialization of biomimietic designs. Biomimicry Switzerland is an active EBF Advisory Board member and supports the development and adoption the EBF framework in Switzerland. 

After decades of research by Hazel Henderson and Janine Benyus and deep collaboration between their two companies, Ethical Markets and Biomimicry 3.8 developed detailed criteria for identifying, working with and investing in companies that adhere to the Principles of Ethical Biomimicry Finance™.  This is a turnkey guide for investors in vetting companies based on the biological truth that the human species is interdependent with all other life forms on Planet Earth.   Life’s Principles, strategies universal to all organisms, should provide the basis for all production and exchange of goods, community structures and services.  This includes the design of monetarysystems, investments, banking, financing,  bartering, reciprocal exchange, payments, crowdfunding, compensation and unpaid gifting, sharing, cooperatives, provision of public goods, infrastructure, collective health, education and life-supporting services.  Read the full public Statement on Transforming Finance Based on Ethics and Life’s Principles.  

The Ethical Biomimicry Finance™ investment methodology is a trademarked brand, available on license to asset managers, investment companies and institutional investors worldwide.  For more information, contact Rosalinda Sanquiche at office@ethicalmarkets.com.