zq07 fall 2013
World: Interview
What initiatives are you working on? Can you highlight exciting Dutch research groups working in the area of bio-inspired design? We signed a ‘Green Deal’ with some parties (private and public) along with our Ministry of Economics to develop a biomimicry knowledge infrastructure for the Netherlands, with the objective of initiating 50 biomimicry projects by 2020. We created a roadmap with a network of 100 people interested in biomimicry from government, industry, science, and education, focusing on 3 main areas: 1) promote nature-inspired innovation and R&D through projects such as bio-climatic buildings based on ecological performance standards; a life-friendly chemistry lab connecting scientists and business; a nutrients (phosphate) recycling project 2) embed biomimicry in education from K-12 to post university by influencing the Human Capital Agenda of various top industry sectors, training educators, etc. 3) connect relevant parties to each other and initiate new projects What are your plans for the future? The implementation of our biomimicry roadmap (until 2020) will keep us busy. Right now our network consists of mainly individuals interested in the topic of biomimicry. We want to further connect them and facilitate biomimicry projects. We try to link our work with other networks and get more people to ‘plug in’ biomimicry in their daily work. Bringing biomimicry into education is another big focus. Also, we’re thinking how to best
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Author: Saskia van den Muijsenberg
organize our ‘consultancy’ work (should it be a separate company etc.). What inhibitors to success have you experienced? Although everybody is interested in the field, it’s hard to get businesses to really commit to biomimicry and start experimenting with it. I think for most businesses the vision is exciting but they are not sure how to start. Finding ways that bring them value right now while taking small steps to a more desirable future state is the key. Another issue, especially for education, is that biomimicry is interdisciplinary and most institutions are not organized in that way. Breaking silos takes time. We also found that people think they should be able to practice biomimicry after a 3-day workshop. The truth is that doing ‘deep’ biomimicry is pretty hard and requires practice. Finally it is very hard to find financial support for ‘awareness’ activities, with which it all starts. It’s also difficult to find funding for the first research phase, as there are no guarantees you will actually find something useful. Once you have proof of evidence and are ready to build prototypes it’s much easier to raise funding. How are you sustained financially? We currently have an assignment from our Ministry of Economics and some funding to put towards additional fundraising, but we put a lot of free time and energy into it.