I just finished a Skype call with an American friend of mine who has been in Cape Town for a year.  She was telling me how she loves it, yet misses certain aspects of her American country.  Being an immigrant myself (born in Zimbabwe, with the fortune to have dual citizenship with Britain and the US, I find it an interesting dilemma having what I call “global buffet” syndrome. Little bit of this from this country, little bit of that, and we end up with a very fat memory of nostalgic choices.

I realize I’ll never feel “location-complete.”  Its ok – Planes and Skype plus my attitude of the glass is half full and cracked, make it easier.

What really turns me on is erasing borders from my mind and focusing on open global learning. In other words, “biomimicry.”

Biomimicry is a new discipline looking at the genius of nature and design.

How nature has and does influence the products, brands and systems we design or build.

TED.com speaker, Janine Beynus definition is:

• Sustainable
• Innovation
• Inspired
• By nature

I wholly agree with her. We are indeed surrounded by genius.

So, I now find it easier to say:  “Hello, I am a digital brand strategist and technologist influenced by the genius of biomimicry.”

I have always wondered how to sum up my Epicurus nature. I care so much about:

• Different learning styles; nature; sustain ability;
• Non-duplication of efforts;
• Genius revolutionary innovation;
• Sharing clearly; growing transparently; integrity;
• Equality;
• Respect;
• Symmetry and, most important of all…play.

Biomimicry is all of the above and then some.

Biomimicry teaches us about communication, strategy, design, learning styles and the intelligence of the independent or of groups/crowds.

In my company, we work with this paradigm daily. For example we are always asking ourselves the following:

How do we effectively build a digital crowd?  tcg is studying reports on energy grids (swarm tech) of how ants and bees efficiently find their food as a whole hive. Perusing learnings from scientists who study energy grids, we glean certain understandings to improve our own crowd gathering techniques.

As my brother, Alasdair Munn (another biomimicry nut) would say. “Clare, that was rather a long way of saying, ‘I love nature and what it teaches us if we simply look, listen and learn.’”

Happy New Year.

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