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  • Testing Slide

    Harness the intelligence found in nature

    Using its 3.8 billion years of R&D.

    Our Innovation Services help businesses explore new opportunities, solve problems and drive sustainability by tapping into nature’s genius.

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  • Powerful Tools

    Reinvigorate your innovation process

    powerful tools to grow professionally

    Our Professional Education Workshops give you the knowledge and tools for solving problems and building teams using nature's time-tested principles.

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Professional EducationAccelerate the adoption, integration and application of biomimicry into your organization.
Educator Academies & Programs Academies train PK-12 educators and our Community Programs are perfect for any group.
Innovation Services Bring our GL Biomimicry Innovation Playbook™ to your design and problem-solving processes.

Excellent learning opportunity. I am very impressed with the course and Great Lakes Biomimicry, and am looking forward to learning more about biomimicry and applying the concepts in my work.

Kimm Jarden, Senior Sustainability Specialist

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company
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Professional Education Workshops

Value of Biomimicry

In this half-day workshop, gain a perspective-shifting look at how learning from nature can enrich existing innovation processes and learn why biomimicry belongs in every innovator’s toolbox.

Upcoming Workshops: We schedule workshops for companies in a custom format, which allows us to gather your whole team or mix of staff members across different departments.

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Fundamentals of Biomimicry

Our two-day Fundamentals of Biomimicry workshop will provide your company with a new innovation tool, kickstart idea generation, boost communication and creativity, and provide many other benefits.

Upcoming Workshops: We schedule workshops for companies in a custom format, which allows us to gather your whole team or mix of staff members across different departments.

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Educator Academies

Our Biomimicry Educator Academies give PK-12 educators the knowledge and tools needed to use biomimicry in the classroom and during community programs.

Biomimicry Immersion Workshop

PK-12 educators: Over four days, learn the fundamentals of biomimicry and how to use it to support curriculum. Discover how to develop lessons that bridge STEM disciplines, humanities and the arts. Empower learners to innovate for a healthier future, and get students outside doing meaningful work. Strengthen your use of problem-based learning, backwards curriculum design, culturally-responsive teaching, and gamified and hands-on activities.

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Foundations of Biomimicry Workshop

What can we learn from a wood frog or a wetland? What happens when we begin to see nature as a teacher and a source of innovative solutions to the design challenges we face? This three-hour workshop offers an introduction to the emerging field of biomimicry. Participants will be introduced to tools and resources and will experience sample lessons that inspire creativity in students as they look at nature through the eyes of architects, engineers and designers.

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Foundations of Biomimicry Workshop: Customized

Interested in our Foundations of Biomimicry workshop, but want something even more closely tailored to meet your curriculum or program goals? We will customize a session that deepens your understanding and skills in the areas that you need most.

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Introduction to Biomimicry for Students

This 50-minute interactive presentation ignites students’ interest in biomimicry and design. Students learn about amazing innovations that have resulted from biomimicry and practice the core skills of a biomimic -- identifying function and translating biological strategies into engineering or design principles. This presentation is suitable for grades 4 through adult, and for audiences of up to 60 people.

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Introduction to Biomimicry for Students with Design Challenge

Start with our interactive biomimicry presentation, and then have your students put their new-found knowledge and skills to work by tackling a mini design challenge. Choose from one of two challenge options: Staying Cool Without Air Conditioning or Managing Stormwater in Urban Environments. The challenge concludes with students sharing their design concepts and drawings with the group.

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Community Programs

Our Community Programs are for general audiences and spark interest in the emerging field of biomimicry. Get your group inspired and looking at the world through a whole new lens -- one that’s inspired by nature!

About Biomimicry and Great Lakes Biomimicry

People of all backgrounds will learn about the emerging field of biomimicry and how Great Lakes Biomimicry is helping to make Northeast Ohio the global hub of biomimicry activities in education, business and innovation.

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Introduction to Biomimicry

Perfect for general audiences, this 50-minute interactive presentation ignites interest in biomimicry and design. Participants will learn about the amazing innovations that have resulted from biomimicry and will practice the core skills of a biomimic -- identifying function and translating biological strategies into engineering or design principles. This presentation is suitable for age 10 through adult, and for audiences of up to 60 people.

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Interactive Biomimicry Design Challenge

Start with our interactive presentation introducing biomimicry, and then put your new-found knowledge and skills to work by tackling a mini design challenge. Choose from one of two challenge options: Staying Cool Without Air Conditioning or Managing Stormwater in Urban Environments. The challenge concludes with participants sharing their design concepts and drawings with the group.

Learn More

Innovation Services

Our Innovation Services consulting will provide your team with a new innovation tool and help your company uncover potential solutions to a product, process or systemic challenge. Benefits include:

  • Enrich your existing innovation process.
  • Learn how to get at the essential, central question for a challenge and craft a more powerful Innovation Objective.
  • Kickstart idea generation and infuse new sources of stimulus into ideation sessions.
  • Spark ideas for your company's sustainability efforts.

There are 5 stages in our Great Lakes Biomimicry Innovation Playbook™ in which our team:

1Clarifies and contextualizes the challenge and delivers an Innovation Objective

2Distills the Innovation Objective into biologically-relevant functions used for querying biology (“How do biological systems ___?”)

3Identifies, researches and documents Biological Models for the Innovation Objective

4Extracts the essence of the Biological Model’s strategy and crafts a description free of biological jargon

5Delivers at least two refined solution concepts with commercial potential

We work with partner The University of Akron and its Biomimicry Research and Innovation Center.

Download the full Innovation Playbook™ here.

Contact us today to book an Innovation Services project: [email protected] or 216-233-1694.

Biomimicry forces us to think differently. We’re now looking at problems we haven’t been able to solve with other traditional methods.

Teresa Wagner, Director, Roofing Science & Technology

Owens Corning