Some comments from Jay Harman
An award-winning entrepreneur and biomimetic inventor, Jay Harman has taken a hands-on approach to his lifelong fascination with the deep patterns found in nature. He has founded and grown multi-million-dollar research and manufacturing companies that develop, patent and license innovative products. Harman is also the author of The Shark’s Paintbrush. Harman’s goal – both as an author and an entrepreneur – is to show industry that improving the efficiency of industrial equipment is beneficial for both the bottom line, and the planet.
Some highlights from his presentation:
- Humanity has exhausted the unsustainable presumption of the Industrial Revolution. The world is waking up to an entire overhaul of the industrial world. The makings of a technical revolution are underway.
- We humans use energy to overcome friction. We seek the path of least energy, which is the shortest distance between two points – a straight line.
- But there is no energy shortage in nature – even though nothing in nature is a straight line; all in nature is curved. And nature doesn’t invest in inefficiency.
- We can bring this world back from the brink. Nothing works the first time; we make mistakes – so we need to maintain our appetite for making things right.
Separate from Jay’s presentation, we conference-goers were inspired by natural landscape art by David Trubridge, who believes that “Without beauty there is no care.”