Over the past few years, the San Diego Zoo has generated a new revenue stream by developing a variety of educational and business programs focused on biomimicry, a school of thought often described as “innovation inspired by nature.”
Using its in-house expertise in conservation, zoology, botany, and other fields, the zoo has organized conferences, developed course materials, and hosted workshops to show how biological designs, processes, and materials can be applied to transform industry and commerce. In its own imitation of nature, the zoo also has worked to expand the ecosystem of biomimicry-focused businesses and research institutions. The zoo even commissioned a report two years ago that says biomimicry could generate as much as $300 billion annually to the U.S. economy by 2025.
Now San Diego Zoo Global, the umbrella organization that operates the San Diego Zoo, Safari Park, and Institute for Conservation Research, has established a new “Centre for Bioinspiration,” with the idea of using biomimicry to inspire a cornucopia of innovation. The core mission is with a product incubator that is intended to help advance biologically inspired products that arise both inside and outside the zoo.
Technologies emerging from the
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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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