The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

June 15Ask Nature

Nature seems, as she often does, to have made a study for some larger design. She delights in this,—a sketch within a sketch, a dream within a dream. Wherever we see it, the lines of the great buttress in the fragment of stone, the hues of the waterfall copied in the flowers that star its bordering mosses, we are delighted; for all the lineaments become fluent, and we mould the scene in congenial thought with its genius.

Margaret Fuller—At Home and Abroad; or, Things and Thoughts in America and Europe (1856)

Striving is perhaps the most counterproductive approach to entrepreneurship.

Nature never strives; it just does what it is meant to do. What if we grew like that?

There's a fascinating vein of science called biomimetics, or biomimicry. It is defined as the imitation of the models, systems, and elements of nature for the purpose of solving complex human problems.

Nature practices biomimicry, as Fuller describes in today's reading, so why can't we? You don't have to look far to find examples in everyday technology—locomotion, adhesives, structural design.

Although there are elements of sustainability to this notion, it's really more of a point of view. How as an entrepreneur can you take leadership lessons from nature?

How can you strive less and accomplish more? How can you consume less and produce more? How can you find ways to live with less and experience more joy?

Challenge Question

1. Want to have some fun? Visit Asknature.org, a database of innovation ...