Social biomimicry uncovering new philosophies for managing complex systems

Social biomimicry is uncovering new philosophies for managing complex human systems, says organizers of an upcoming conference on the subject.

Social biomimicry is defined as the emulation of the interactive practices of a species. The conference, funded by the Arizona State University School of Life Sciences, is exploring what insect colonies can teach human organizations.

Clint Penick is one of six Arizona State graduate students organizing the Feb. 18-20 event titled Social Biomimicry: Insect Societies and Human Design.

He says insect colonies offer different approaches to management practices around task allocation, for instance.

Human organizations, with their tendency to pre-define a role for each member, might be able to boost their productivity and efficiency if they take a cue from insect colonies and allow for “more fluidity” between tasks and roles, says Penick.

“When you have people that are working on pre-defined jobs, they might be spending a lot of time not doing anything while someone else in the same organization is swamped with a ton of work,” he notes.

“And so how a social insect colony would adapt to a situation like that is (to have) a lot more fluidity between tasks. . . When one (insect) becomes extremely busy, then (another) will switch to that task, so . . . it’s not just a fixed network.”

The conference will explore these and other biomimetic concepts, presenting new findings in social biomimicry as well as tackling some of the challenges it presents.

Penick notes many of the solutions uncovered through the social biomimicry process have been shown to be work well in models but there’s been reluctance to accept them by companies in the real world.

“A lot (of businesses) seem very resistant to ideas that change the way their management procedures work,” he says.

“So one of the goals of the conference is to understand where these problems come up and communicating the work that people have been doing in social biomimicry to the people that are actually implementing it.”

Co-conference organizer Dani Moore, who is heading up a work group to discuss the challenges of implementation, points out the conversation will include focusing on when social biomimicry cannot be applied in human organizations.

“One of the great strengths of approaches inspired by social biomimicry is that it can be really robust and flexible and can deal with changing conditions very quickly,” says Moore. “But one of the down sides is that it is somewhat unpredictable; you can’t necessarily set system parameters, so things can take off in a direction that you wouldn’t want them to take off.

“So a big question is figuring out when does this apply and when does it not apply?”

New research and dialogue on how insect architecture can be applied to the design of sustainable buildings and cities will also be a component of the event.

Penick notes the conference is also forward edge in that it convenes leaders from a broad cross-section of disciplines, including biology, engineering, design and business.

To learn more about the event, visit this link.

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