Dani Moore has great hopes for the future, and a big reason for this is the growing movement towards decentralized and individualized activity worldwide, stimulated in large part by the greater access to knowledge and global connections people now have through the Internet.
Moore, who facilitated a recent conference on social biomimicry, says the organizational approach of social insects provides added confirmation that the direction the global community is taking has significant potential for shaping a better future.
“The whole idea of social biomimicry is having individuals without a leader accomplishing great things,” says Moore.
“I think the world is becoming increasingly decentralized and that individuals are gaining more and more control of their own futures, and that thinking like a social insect colony is how people will connect to one another and make great products and innovations arise out of unco-ordinated networks.”
Moore was one of six Arizona State University graduate students who organized the Feb. 18-20 event titled Social Biomimicry: Insect Societies and Human Design.
Convening representatives from a broad cross-section of disciplines, including biology, engineering, business and design, the event generated and highlighted fresh insights around organizational design, product design as well as how to improve cross-disciplinary collaboration for design purposes, say Moore and two fellow organizers Clint Penick and Rebecca Clark.
Moore facilitated a working group that tackled what social insects might have to teach about organizational design.
She says the group identified that a key benefit an insect-inspired approach offers is robustness.
“You are able to deal with changes and unpredictability in your landscape more quickly if you empower the individuals to make decisions based on the local information that they’re encountering at that moment,” says Moore.
One of her favourite points raised in the discussion was how typical insect colonies include many members that don’t appear to be doing anything.
“In insect colonies many of the members do no work, and as humans we tend to look at that and saying they’re freeloading, but in fact it may be advantageous to the colony . . . (and may) be efficient at a group level,” says Moore, adding she plans to explore this concept further in her research.
The working group also noted that corporate culture is an important factor in determining whether an organization can effectively apply social biomimetic principles.
“If you are the kind of organization that has encouraged innovation and radical changes and value the feedback of the people who have to be on the ground doing the new procedures, then it can really work,” says Moore.
— More to come
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