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Transparency

Mar 18th, 2011 by beedancestory

As referenced in an earlier post this month, author Daniel Goleman of  “Emotional Intelligence” fame writes in his most recent book the need to adopt a more transparent mindset in our economy     (Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything, Crown Business, 2009).   To underscore his theory, Goleman discusses a 3 step process modeled by swarming insects and how these simple rules hold the group together as a focused, performance based system:
  • Step 1: Know Your Impacts.
  • Step 2: Favor Improvements.
  • Step 3: Share Best Practices.

We agree with Goleman’s thesis for the most part and have used a similar framework for growing the work of ZeroLandfill™ beyond Northeast Ohio over the past 5 years:

  • Step 1: Know Your Impacts – ZL measures and reports project data
  • Step 2: Favor Improvements – ZL learns by listening to participants
  • Step 3: Share Best Practices – ZL serves the community by offering the model to others for quick adoption
At its core, a swarm is simple arithmetic exhibited by honeybees and other social organisms:  Conditions + Trigger = Action (or Movement or Change) ie…a honeybee colony produces a new queen (Condition), the new queen leaves the hive (Trigger), workers and drones loyal to the new queen follow her to a new location (Action). And the bloodline continues for another generation.  As a parallel, we demonstrated swarm math in organizing a panel for SXSW Interactive this year: Call For Panelists + Social Media Campaign = Panel Approved.
In our dual role of technology designer and facilitator of ZeroLandfill™ terrestrial programming, we focus on the intended outcome first (action or movement), applying  one or more of many triggers at the moment that conditions are optimal.  It’s an inside out approach to problem solving that usually yields an innovative outcome. And yes, as in nature, failure does occur from time to time, which is fine (not every honeybee swarm achieves a successful outcome of relocating members of the colony).  Adding a layer of process that incorporates the 3 rules of Goleman permits a result couched in transparency.
Follow our story as we develop and commercialize innovative solutions in the cloud and on the ground based on nature’s principles.  You can find us at http://twitter.com/beedancer or subscribe to our blog at http://beedance.com/wordpress/.

 

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Honeybees are Motivated by the Rules of Attraction

Mar 17th, 2011 by beedancestory

Advice:  Madison Avenue needs to go on a hike.  Srlsy (for you texters).  Should they accept my invitation they will notice that nature as a very complex system thrives by doing the opposite of what billions of dollars in high risk/low reward spending strives to achieve on behalf of their client.  Influence is out, attraction is in.  And has been for generations in the natural world.

Does the largest blossom or tallest plant have enough influence to receive the most honeybee attention in the garden?  Not really, if you examine the evidence that reveals very few sunflowers and calla lilies growing in the wild or in most backyards.  Does attraction come in many forms? Yes, and it’s all a matter of scale.  Example…the sweet clover is ubiquitous in most yards, fields and meadows.  The tiny pink flowers are barely perceptible to the human eye and the carpet that sweet clover provides in and around native and not-so-native plantings is tolerable to most species including me and you.  To honeybees, sweet clover is a bonanza of nectar and pollen as far as their complex eyes can see.  The richness of the nectar flow and the prolonged blooming season of the sweet clover is a bit of an insurance policy to the colony.  When all other blossoms fade, go back to the clover.  This form of influence is counter to how humans have been conditioned for less than thoughtful decision making.  The fastest, sexiest, hippest, and loudest imagery does not automatically guarantee commerce is about to break out.  To prove my theory, I challenge you to name five superbowl commercials that aired less than three months ago to great fanfare.

A multi-dimensional approach to attraction vs. influence would be a worthy marketing experiment.  What are the core values of the audience you are trying to persuade?  Are there memory triggers (grilled cheese) or other soft buttons that can be pressed in your messaging?  To honeybees, the governing rubric is pretty straight forward:  diversity of resources, followed by convenience of resources, then quality of resources and finally the quantity of resources.  A complete inversion of our current model of persuasion.

When you go on your hike, take a look around and think about how your design can blossom when viewed through the rules of attraction.

Get inspired by the stories of the champions found in nature and how they can influence our problem solving. Pick-up or download the definitive guide to nature as mentor, model and measure Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature by Janine Benyus.

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Honeybees Imprint and Share Knowledge

Mar 16th, 2011 by beedancestory

During my SXSW walkabout in Austin this week I am struck by one sensory response that is clearly superior to all of my other senses in this maelstrom of endless activity… the sense of smell.  Before all of the stereotypical reactions cross your mind about too many people crushed into too small of a space (bet the power of this particular sense and it’s direct connection to memory is at work in your mind at the moment), bear with me on this illustration.  Beginning at a very early age and continuing throughout our lives, certain memories are imprinted in our being and serve as handholds to times that were good and, in some cases, times that were not so good.  The sense of smell and it’s close cousin the sense of taste provide a gateway to our memory banks due to their ability to bypass the cognitive process that is required of sight, sound and touch.  Very powerful reactions are invoked as scent and taste are stimulated.

So what does this have to do with SXSW?  Or honeybees?  Lots.  Think of the Austin Convention Center or downtown Austin itself as a wild meadow with numerous species of life blooming, crawling, hopping and running about.  The result is a stew of sensory overload…underscored by thousands of microchips firing on demonstration gear, within portable devices, and the building itself create an undertone of ozone and warmed ceramic. Suddenly, what cuts through this funk of powered electronics and its users?

The friendly, nostalgic and beckoning smell of toasted cheese sandwiches being grilled. An outlier in this ode to innovation and progress.  Like a beacon, you are drawn to the warm embrace of butter on griddle and the reminder of home and hearth this culinary staple offers (baked bread, crisping bacon, and roasting coffee beans offer a similar phenomenon).  Smiles become the order of the day as you approach the oversized wedge of cheese that serves as a kitchen kiosk and you plot your ordering strategy.  The power of this particular sensory experience reaches a sort of tipping point among the attendees that by Day 2 of the conference you are coordinating schedules with a colleague through the phrase ‘Meet you at The Big Cheese after the next session…’.  A human form of the beedance is mimicked right before your nose. Such an important icon needs to go on the SXSW scheduling app next year.

This form of imprinting and sharing is facilitated every day that a worker bee is alive.  Whether it is through sensory markers embedded in their hard drive that quickly process pheromones secreted by their hive-mates or the powerful memory of a particularly robust nectar flow in a nearby blossom, honeybees rely on their keen sense of smell and the direct tie to an amazing memory to survive.  Their antennae are sophisticated filters (bees don’t have a nose) and guide their decision making closely when every wing beat counts.  Our joy and rush of memory triggered by the first encounter of the toasted cheese booth at a major trade show is no different than what the honeybee experiences in an early morning flight.  Memories are indexed and processed for quick response and new sensations are cataloged for future use.  The opening blossom of a spring tulip or daffodil creates the same opportunity as the first batch of sandwiches on the grill at SXSW.

Photo credit: Amy Roskilly, Roskilly Photography

Can this sensory response be implemented into technology?  Is there a design challenge that is rooted in the need to create powerful associations and fast recall?  Take a page from the operating manual of the bees (and The Big Cheese at SXSW).

BeeDance recently participated in a panel at South By Southwest that asked the question ‘can biomimicry offer new and creative pathways to innovative technology design?’. For more information on how to align a design strategy with a champion in nature, visit the knowledge portal Ask Nature.

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Honeybees are Regenerative

Mar 15th, 2011 by beedancestory

A common definition of the term regenerative states:  [design] processes that restore, renew or revitalize their own sources of energy and materials, creating sustainable systems that integrate the needs of society with the integrity of nature. As we designed and refined the national reuse project ZeroLandfill™ over the past 6 years, we repeatedly consulted our champion,

Photo credit: Amy Roskilly, Roskilly Photography

both through the available research on honeybees as well as observed evidence to understand how they could do so much in such a confined, hyper-local operating area.  One factor became obvious; every resource that was identified and collected by the bee was relabeled from its original intent to support the needs of the colony.  Nectar became honey, pollen became brood nourishment, propolis became hive sealant, and on and on. What was produced by one organism (in most cases as a waste by-product) was reclassified as a valued resource by another organism.  This phenomenon is the basis for a regenerative system design.  Once a material enters the honeybee’s system voluntarily through the actions of the workers, it becomes a recurring participant in the ebb and flow of energy within the hive.

ZeroLandfill™ and its online counterpart BeeDance.com (when launched) follows the same pattern as the regenerative system managed by the honeybee.  The colony (ZL participants) seeks resources that are cast off by one system and begins the process of collecting and re-labeling these same materials to suit a new purpose.  A textile sample, discarded after limited use by the supply chain, takes on new meaning when offered to audiences outside of the waste stream.  What once had a single utility (covering) now takes on multiple permutations (scrapbook accessory, quilt material, commissioned art) as defined by the network of participants. All within the same city block, zip code, or at the outside limits, the area code of the material source.  A linear process based on the status quo behavior of take, make and toss now has the opportunity to bend into a form that represents a circular, or in some cases, a closed loop material flow.  Regeneration is possible if we give ourselves permission to [explore] other applications for an existing item.  The expended energy investment already embodied in most manufactured products has the opportunity to be extended and leveraged under this mindset.  It’s a bee thing after all.

In nature, a lot of waste is generated but nothing is wasted.  Every element has an expiration date.  At that moment, what was once a participant in an existing system becomes a player in the same or an adjacent system.  Rather than being hauled, incinerated, littered or mechanically dismantled.  It’s a lesson worth noting.

BeeDance recently participated in a panel at South By Southwest that asked the question ‘can biomimicry offer new and creative pathways to innovative technology design?’. A graphic illustration of the presentation was captured by Ogilvy Notes in real-time.  Enjoy!

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Honeybees Create Value for Multiple Systems

Mar 14th, 2011 by beedancestory

What is the intention of your product/service design?  As our SXSW panel demonstrated this week, intention is an important element of design.  Is there a design strategy conversation underway that captures a clear outcome before committing pencil to paper, or code to screen?  Is your methodology agile, permitting quick response to/adoption of unintentional outcomes?  Are you in a position to offer multiple value streams through one solution?  Here’s where the honeybee can offer a teaching moment. Through the core survival function of foraging for food, honeybees also commit the following random acts of kindness:

  • They move pollen from blossom to blossom, completing the reproductive cycle for thousands of species of plant life
  • They create enough honey from nectar to feed themselves as well as others (bears, humans, robber bees)
  • They build combs with wax caps to store their food and rear their young from a substance that is strong enough to be harvested for alternative uses such as beeswax for candles or repurposed combs for new hives.

    Photo credit: Amy Roskilly, Roskilly Photography

Examine your own design strategy.  Are you identifying (upfront) incremental opportunity that can be yielded through the initial core function?  Are you close enough to your customer to sense additional applications to your single idea? Do you have the ability to provide a nimble response when appropriate? Think about creating additional value at every step.  This mindset has worked well for a long time in honeybee world.

BeeDance recently participated in a panel at South By Southwest that asked the question ‘can biomimicry offer new and creative pathways to innovative technology design?’. A graphic illustration of the presentation was captured by Ogilvy Notes in real-time.  Enjoy!

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Honeybees Transport Local Resources Three Ways

Mar 11th, 2011 by beedancestory

A week in Austin presents an interesting challenge.  Clothes? Check.  Conference material? Check Check.  Technology? Oof.  Client meeting stuff?  Oof Oof.

In addition to attending the conference, I have a business or three to run. And customers to visit, workshops to convene, cool SXSW gear to schlep home.  Five bags and cases could easily be consumed with ‘the stuff’ that I feel is necessary.  So I turned to the bees and asked them how they do it…how do they manage to travel and handle such massive amounts of pollen, wax, nectar, and water (massive in bee terms) and not lose their bee minds?  Their response was immediate and honest as is the case with all feedback in nature.  Stick with the rule of three.

Honeybees are designed to handle a lot of ‘the stuff’ that they need for success.  Most of their day is spent moving and sorting materials so let’s examine their mechanical system:

Transport solution #1 – ingest nectar, a primary food source, and carry inside their gullet

Transport solution #2 – pack pollen, a secondary food source, and carry inside pouches on their abdomens. Ditto propolis, a waxy substance secreted by plants.  Pack inside the same pouches and take it home for hive construction and repairs

Transport solution #3 – attract pollen, it will stick to the hairs on the head, abdomen and thorax by the static electricity generated during flight.

Transport solution #4 – nope, don’t need it.  Three will do.

If honeybees can get it done in three ways or less, why not me?  So it has come down to this:  Business stuff?  Take the electrons only.  If it can’t be put in an iAnything, it stays home.  Clothing?  One bag.  Everything else?  Probably don’t need it.  Let you know how it works out after SXSW.

Honeybee lessons are powerful organizing principles for our technology start-up BeeDance.  They not only govern our product and service design, but provide the foundation for our organizational structure, policies and culture.  We have discovered our champion in nature.  How about you?

Learn more about the lessons abundant in natural systems at our SXSW Interactive panel.

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Honeybees Replicate Best Practices

Mar 11th, 2011 by beedancestory

Practice makes perfect.  Heard that one before? So have honeybees. As documented in previous Waste Not Want posts, honeybees offer unique and interesting alternatives to consider for solving human centered problems.  Can search be impacted by the R&D offered by organisms such as beneficial pollinators?  Are we able to uncover new designs in server optimization and efficiency by understanding how honeybees communicate?  Does the swarm hold new intelligence for social media providers to adopt that allows trusted source information to travel faster?  At the basis of these questions is the premise that nature does indeed hold the keys to more elegant problem solving.

Because nature is a complex system that continues to learn, it is easy to tear out one page of the playbook  and look at the phenomenon of replication.  In the case of our champion, the honeybee, a more vivid example of practice makes perfect as a design strategy cannot be found.

Consider technology (of course, given that it is SXSW Interactive week).   Are you designing for yourself or are you focused on what you think your audience is looking for? As creatures of habit and patterns, we know what we like as well as what we need.  Your potential audience is no different.  Rather than trying to figure out what a potential user is looking for in an app, an online tool or a web based service, ask yourself first.  What would I do?  What would I do?  Chances are you will attract users to a marketable idea much quicker and more efficiently because you will have adopted the language of your product/service from within.  Nature’s brilliance and resilience is no different.  What looks on the surface as a system made up of agreements, compromises and arrangements is actually a widely distributed group of soloists.  Nature at its roots is incredibly self-centered…with a purpose.  An organism adapts to the things that it needs and wants first before concerning itself with a neighbor.  It gets good at the basics and repeats.  Creating interesting associations along the way.

Tech development and innovation based solutions should be no different.  Build it for you and they will come (and understand what you are talking about).  Just like our friends in honeybee world, an unintended consequence from rote and necessary behavior (pollination via foraging) can lead to amazingly beautiful results.

Learn more about the lessons abundant in natural systems at our SXSW Interactive panel.

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Honeybees are Precise

Mar 9th, 2011 by beedancestory

The beeline is an age old saying that infers a direct approach to an action “he made a beeline to the drinking fountain after practice…”.  This colloquialism is based on the behavior of honeybees, a species that favors straight lines of flight over meandering patterns out of necessity.  What honeybees know that others do not is they only have so many wing beats to offer while alive.  Not a wing beat to waste while going about their business of foraging and swarming.  Why?  Because of their tireless work ethic (they don’t even sleep) honeybees wear out their wings rather quickly.  In fact, it is amazing that they are able to fly at all given the odd shape of their abdomen and thorax in relation to the rather under-engineered and fragile wings.  But they make it all work somehow with the knowledge that they will most likely perish not from colony collapse disorder or invasive threats like mites and fungi, but from the impact of hitting the ground when their wings fail in mid flight.  Efficiency through precision is the order of the day, thus the motivation to fly in straight lines.  This blogger has been reminded of the beeline phenomenon on a regular basis while observing busy hive activity.  If I wander into the flight path near the entrance to the hive it is not uncommon to have worker bees bounce right off of me rather than circle around me.

As a governing principle, precision can also be measured in how bees communicate across a large system.  There are lessons embedded for the technology and other fields in the phenomenon known as the bee dance (a characteristic we honor through our company name).

During the bee dance or waggle dance, the location of a resource such as food, water or alternate shelter is expressed to other members of the colony through a dance language that is offered by the returning forager.  Walking in a figure eight motion inside the hive (in complete darkness), the worker bee, that holds new knowledge, imparts it to her hive mates with a series of abdominal shakes.  The cycles of the shakes, the duration of the figure eight, the angle of the dance and the speed of a complete circuit creates a picture for the observing bees that outlines the location of the resource in relationship to the hive and the position of the sun.  A sort of vectoring system.  As other bees begin to understand the location they join in with the original dancer to form a conga line of vibrating bees thus forming a caucus of agreement that empowers them all to launch from the hive to gather the resource discovered by their co-worker.

The bee dance and the bee line are two of the characteristics that set the honeybee apart from other swarming insects.  As SXSW is swarmed by thousands of foragers in search of learning and entertainment, these lessons of precision and efficiency can come into play with the right application and learning tool.  Learn more about the lessons abundant in natural systems at our SXSW Interactive panel.

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Honeybees Thrive on Diversity

Mar 8th, 2011 by beedancestory

To a casual observer it appears that honeybees practice a predictable foraging style when seeking pollen, nectar and water. They work the squash blossoms then move on to the wild clover with a final stop at the blackberry bush. Predictable? Certainly.  Unimaginative? Not really.  Because their navigation system is multi-platform (two different types of eyes [complex-identifying resources, simple-collision avoidance] and antennae to detect odors) honeybees have the unique ability to collect, manage and discern a lot of data at once.  What do they do with all of this input?  Honeybees learn.

Various studies have shown that the speed of flight of a honeybee allows their complex eyes to process imagery to their advantage.  Reds are more vivid at certain speeds, while oranges and yellows are more apparent with a slight variation in wing power.  As the worker bee scans the landscape in mid-flight, this flight control system kicks in and allows her to determine the richest target first.  Sensory data picked up by the antennae confirms the presence (or lack of) other foraging bees, nectar flow and predator signs.  The diversity of this movie that constantly runs in the mind of the bee governs the decision making.  With limited daylight hours to operate and a mortality rate of 30 to 40 days, the honeybee is tasked with accurate decision making as a matter of survival.  The right call must be made each time as to how their energy will be budgeted for collecting resources for the colony.

If the pumpkin plants in a garden are blossoming, the honeybee can determine the value of this nectar flow in relation to other potential stops simply by adjusting speed of flight. For those that raise pumpkins, you will already know that pumpkin blossoms only open early in the morning and each blossom perishes after one day (a sort of timer in nature). Honeybees will make note of this during their travels and bypass other less valuable food sources to maximize the opportunity of harvesting nectar and pollen from a pumpkin blossom while it is open.  Do they forget the other sources of nourishment that were edited from their flight plan?  No, they just move them down the priority list to be revisited once the highest quality resource is exhausted.  A navigation system that is wired for diversity and user managed to maximize available bandwidth.  There is a lesson or two in that design for the attendees and participants at SXSW Interactive.

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Honeybees are Generous

Mar 7th, 2011 by beedancestory

Photo credit: Amy Roskilly, Roskilly Photography

If you keep stacking frames and supers, honeybees will fill them up.  So says most beekeepers when dealing with a healthy and vibrant honeybee colony.  Honeybees are excellent at maximizing the space allocated to build comb, store honey and rear their young.  In the wild every crevice of the hollow tree or stump is filled out with beeswax based comb.  When occupying a beekeepers box, the suspended frames quickly fill with the foundation of the hive, the honeycomb.  There is always a risk of harvesting too much honey from a hive, leaving too little for the colony to use for food during prolonged cold seasons or winter (a common rookie beekeeping mistake).

As a generous species, bees work to ensure vitality for themselves as well as others.  Two acts of incredible humility and generosity are the hallmark of honeybees; during the act of pollination when billions of pollen grains are physically moved each day from flower to flower by foraging workers and inside the hive when honey is created by evaporating the moisture from regurgitated plant nectar.  They possess the original random acts of kindness motivation.

We are entering a span of learning courtesy of the South By Southwest Interactive conference.  Our hope is to bring knowledge back to the hive based on what we experience in this meadow of ideas in Austin.  Humbly, generously and tirelessly.  Watch this space as we share. Gotta question?  Post your ask on Twitter and be sure to use the hashtag #SXswarm so we can capture and respond.

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