Natural Relationships - Partners or Pests? What lessons can business learn?
By: Polly Williamson - 20/08/2010
Nature has evolved different styles of relationship – ranging from partner to parasite – to cope with stress and change. There is much that can be learnt from nature by business organisations to help them adapt more rapidly to the rapidly changing or uncertain conditions.
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In nature, evolutionary adaptation has led organisms to make optimal use of their neighbourhood and environment, adapting relationships into the most beneficial for any given situation. See this briefing on "Natural Relationships" for examples of nature's relationship types: partners, parasites and pests.
A germinating orchid seed, which requires a specific fungus thus exemplifying nature's relationships
Nature's collaborative approach allows it to cope with dynamic change, to drive innovation and increase productivity; there are elements of nature's strategies that can also help business to flourish in transformational times. A value-driven business 'ecosystem' that is shaped by nature will have an in-built level of trust and resilience that is missing from business relationships that are driven purely by price and contract, and businesses including chemicals company Akzo Nobel and innovative brewer Adnams have delivered financial benefits to their shareholders and environmental and social benefits to their communities by working collaboratively with their value chains.
To provide innovative solutions to the challenges businesses are facing, Kew and Biomimicry for Creative Innovation (BCI) have formed a unique partnership focused on helping businesses develop a culture that fosters creativity and co-operation. Follow the related links at the top of this page to find out more about Business Shaped by Nature.
- Polly Williamson -
Tags: clever | extraordinary | vibrant | valuable | passionate | healing
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About this blog
'Business Inspired by Nature' is an emergent, resilient, dynamic new collective of individuals with a unique combination of skills, experiences and insights. We have a common goal of creating a healthy vibrant world by bridging business and biology, in other words, ecological thinking for radical transformation. We aim to transform industrial supply chains into business ecosystems, and to merge business ecosystems into natural ecosystems.
'Business Inspired by Nature's' collaboration of professional change agents, biologists and design professionals work with clients to apply nature's principles to business products, processes and systems.
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