2,000 bioinspiration-related articles last year, and she counted 222 patent filings in 2012. The field with the most R&D activity is chemistry and chemical manufacturing, followed by material science, physical chemistry, biomaterials, and biomedicine.
By the year 2030, Reaser estimates that bioinspiration-based products could represent 15 percent of industry sales in chemical manufacturing, and account for an equal amount in materials.
“We believe by the year 2030, that bioinspiration in the U.S. could account for $425 billion in economic output, with another $65 billion in benefits achieved through reduced resource depletion and pollution,” Reaser said. (The Centre for Bioinspiration commissioned her report.)
That means the investment implications are enormous, but Reaser noted that investment capital has been a key limiting factor for the industry. Investors remain skeptical, she said, citing the general lack of public awareness and an “adversarial relationship” between environmental activists and the business community.
“We need a major home run,” Reaser said. “There hasn’t been an ‘iPhone’ in bioinspiration. At this point there is a significant lack of awareness about bioinspiration that is holding back innovation.”
To me, however, the bioinspiration industry already hit a home run with the invention of Velcro, the nylon hook-and-loop fastener that has become a globally ubiquitous product. Velcro is even popular with astronauts in space. (It was invented in 1948 by a Swiss electrical engineer, George de Mestral, who came up with the idea after closely examining the burrs that stuck to his clothes during his walks through the countryside.)
But for reasons that aren’t apparent to me, Velcro is not viewed as an iPhone of bioinspiration. When I asked, “Why not?” Berkeley’s Full suggested that Velcro wouldn’t qualify as an archetype of bioinspiration because it was a relatively simple design. (U.S. velcro sales in 2008 amounted to just $298 million. Apple doesn’t break out iPhone revenue, but the company sold over 10 million iPhones in 2008.) Paul Roben, senior director of technology development at the Salk Institute, added, “It comes down to ‘what is bioinspiration—how do you define it and how does it work?’ We have to be careful that we don’t get put into some kind of box somewhere.”
So what’s an unknown emerging industry to do? Reaser suggested a number of steps to gain momentum:
—Expand cooperative initiatives among academic researchers to promote collaboration, and convene a conference to establish a bioinspiration road map for innovation.
—Help link scientists who specialize in bioinspiration with companies seeking new ways to innovate and to address business challenges.
—Build a network of technology and business mentors who can help bioinspiration-based startups prove the value of their technologies.
—Establish more incubators like San Diego’s Centre for Bioinspiration, which organizes bioinspiration workshops that help companies improve their existing products .
In many ways, these are the same types of recommendations that many parts of the country are adopting as they work to boost their regional innovation ecosystems. Still, as Reaser put it in her talk, startups need to prove the value of their bioinspired innovations. “It’s not enough to win a prize,” she said.
