What nature can teach us

When working on product innovations, we try to be as creative as possible.
​We use various methods to trigger creative solutions and ask ourselves things like "what would my childhood hero do to solve this problem?". Or we use methods such as "Brainwriting" to build on the ideas of others.
But not only heroes like Superman and Harry Potter can help us in ideation. A source of inspiration that is used way too rarely is right outside our door: nature.

Did you ever ask yourself why honeycombs look the way they do? Or why birds fly in a V-formation? What is nature's background for doing things this way and not differently?
In a Ted Talk by Arndt Pechstein, you can find out more about how great innovations where created with nature as the inspiration.
Marine biologist Frank Fish for example got inspired by the flippers of humpback whales.

(c) Digital Trends

He applied the bumpy texture to wind turbines and thus managed to increase efficiency and save energy. Another example is a group of researchers in Great Britain who got inspired by bats and invented a blindman's stick with ultrasound. This allows a blind person to receive information on the distance to certain items that are in their way.

The method of understanding creations, systems and processes of nature and adopting them to create new products is called Biomimicry. It's not only used as an inspiration to create products but also in other areas like process or service development.
Moreover, we don't directly copy what inspires us to solve today's problems - we only use an abstract solution of what we see in nature. 
This is why ant colonies served as an inspiration to help smoothen future traffic. Another impressive example is a beetle that lives in the desert and ingests water by absorbing it from foggy air through its back. When we start applying these kinds of habits and solutions to entire systems we can get very valuable input from nature.
So next time you are working on a complex problem and need to get some inspiration for valuable ideas: why don't you open the door and go outside, take a walk in the forest or find inspiration in a biology book? Who knows - maybe you will find exactly what you are looking for!