Hot new trends, startups, products and ideas + inspiration from past innovations
Jul 24 2011
“Human subtlety…will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.”
– Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
Human art always works with an unavoidable reserve of waste. Mimic always, the elegance of nature. The closer your product is to nature, the closer it is to perfection.
May 12 2010
Pringles Potato Chips are based on the observation of wet leaves, which can stack up in piles without tearing themselves to bits. They survive by stacking compactly together. Enter the immortal Pringles Potato Chip.
Look around at nature and ask yourself, What is like this in Nature? How has Nature solved this problem?
Apr 28 2010
It’s not that the honey bee population has declined in absolute terms. But in relative economic terms, the global market is more hungry than ever for honey and pollination. The major staple crops that are needed to feed the world– corn, wheat, potatoes– do not need bee pollination. The global population has doubled in the last 50 years, and production of staple crops has kept up with population. However, the world has developed a sweet tooth. And the production of pollinator-dependent crops has quadrupled, crops like watermellon, cashew, and cardamom.
The 45% increase in honeybees has not kept up with this 400% increase in demand. Not every country in the world is suffering from a low supply of honey bees. Turkey, China, and Argentina have the largest bee populations in the world. But the United States is having lots of trouble. So is Europe.
This may be the time for you to become a beekeeper so you can be the one supplying farmers. As demand increases around the world and in the US, which has been happening for decades, these honey bees will only become more valuable. Or how about getting the US Dept. of Agriculture to fund your research into finding ways to increase apiary reproduction, or how to reduce our dependency on crop pollination.
Get all the figures in Conservation Magazine