Teeming : How Superorganisms Work Together to Build Infinite Wealth on a Finite Planet (and Your Company Can Too)

Ultra-social animals like dolphins, elephants, wolves, and baboons work together to accomplish complex tasks just like we do, because the power of individual intelligence has its limits. Ants, honeybees, slime molds, and fungi have discovered a more effective way to collaborate and innovate: through networks. By coordinating the actions of millions of individuals, networked species create rich hotspots of sustainable abundance. Today, the internet gives us the power to harness these same strategies for our own success. Using six time-tested principles, Dr. Woolley-Barker shows how businesses can mimic these techniques for generating long-lasting value in an unpredictable world. Why does the bumblebee have better aerodynamics than a 747? What structural design is shared by a tornado and a blood vessel? Since the Industrial Revolution, manufacturers have built things by a process known as "heat, beat, and treat". They use enormous amounts of energy to heat raw material, shape it with heavy machinery, and maintain its design, strength, and durability with toxic chemicals. Now, in a world of depleted natural resources, entrepreneurs and scientists are turning to nature to inspire future products that are more energy- and cost-efficient. Biomimicry, the science of employing nature to advance sustainable technology, is arguably one of the hottest new business concepts. At the center of this growing movement has been award-winning inventor and biomimetic entrepreneur Jay Harman. In The Shark's Paintbrush, Harman introduces us to pioneering engineers in a wide array of businesses who are uncovering and copying natures hidden marvels. He shows business leaders and aspiring entrepreneurs how we can reconcile creating more powerful, lucrative technologies with maximizing sustainability. He injects a whole new vocabulary and way of thinking into the business sphere that speaks to both small start-ups and corporate giants. For hundreds of millions of years, ants and termites and vast underground fungal networks have worked together in huge cities, tens of millions strong, compounding their wealth from one generation to the next with no management whatsoever. With just four simple principles—Collective Intelligence, Distributed Leadership, Swarm Creativity, and Regenerative Value—Dr. Tamsin Woolley-Barker's groundbreaking new book, Teeming, shows how these diverse and independent individuals pool their experience to creat rich hotspots of abundance. Dr. Woolley-Barker is an evolutionary biologist and biomimicry pioneer whose work shows how business can mimic the techniques of superogranisms to create generating long-lasting value in an unpredictable world. An Introduction To The Scientific Practice Through Which Natural Models Are Inspiring Innovative Solutions To Pressing Industrial Challenges Examines Such Examples As Wind Turbines Based On Whale Fins And Cockroach-emulating Prosthetic Limbs. Introduction : The Nature Of Innovation -- A New Golden Age -- The Next Industrial Revolution -- Going With The Flow -- Catching The Worldwide Wave -- Biomimicry At Work -- Secrets From The Sea -- Scales And Feathers -- The Bee's Knees -- Spores And Seeds -- Wampum -- The Nature Of Change -- The Corporate Jungle -- Dollar Signs -- Reorganizing (your) Business -- Epilogue. Jay Harman. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.