For businesses, biomimicry is about bringing a new discipline - biology - to the design table. It's not to write an environmental impact statement, as most biologists in business do right now.

There are three types of biomimicry - one is copying form and shape, another is copying a process, like photosynthesis in a leaf, and the third is mimicking at an ecosystem's level, like building a nature-inspired city.

Listening to nature's operating instructions.

Nature works with five polymers. Only five polymers. In the natural world, life builds from the bottom up, and it builds in resilience and multiple uses.

Biomimicry is basically taking a design challenge and then finding an ecosystem that's already solved that challenge, and literally trying to emulate what you learn.

Everyone is trying to jump on the biomimic bandwagon. But a cork floor is not biomimicry. Neither is using bacteria to clean water.

There are literally as many ideas as there are organisms.