Newsnight date confirmed

Newsnight's economics editor Paul Mason visited Pembrokeshire to interview me and fellow eco thinkers Gareth Banks from furniture maker OrangeBox, Kevin Bird from low impact campsite Trellyn, and Chris Cavanagh, now General Manager at TYF, previously MD at howies.

Paul was interested in how successful businesses balance economics, environment and society and interviewed us on ways that we had managed (or not) to integrate this into our businesses.

The feature on TYF / St Davids goes out on this Tuesday evening on BBC1 at 10.30.

Comments appreciated.

Any businesses out there who interested in the connection between biomimicry, profitability and a sustainable future will be interested in our forthcoming project with the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.

Biomimicry talk in London

There's a handful of biomimicry talks at EcoBuild in London next week:

1. Principles of biomimicry - Michael Pawlyn, Exploration Architecture
2. Ecosystems as architectural inspiration - Jerry Tate
3. Biomimicry and organisational excellence - AM
4. Biomimcry in product design - Nigel Stansfield, Interface Flor

Biomimicry Innovation Centre

As a further spin-off from TYF EcoSapiens' work with the Do Project, three of the team from BCI: Biomimicry for Creative Innovation spent three highly productive hours ysterday working with the Innovation and Comms teams from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, generating ideas and opportunities to make the most of their enormous botanical knowledge and expertise through the creation of a Biomimicry Innovation Centre.

With a planned launch  in May 2010, our first steps will involve recruiting a dozen corporate clients who recognise that there are some fundamental new lessons to be learned about product design, business processes and maintaining an flexible, adaptive culture, if they're to weather the storms of price increases and resource constraints that are brewing on the horizon. Following the May launch, four businesses will be invited to 'dive deep' and explore the opportunities to increase reslience, sustainability and profitability by re-working aspects of their work, with inspiration from nature's genius.

To get a taster of the opportunities at Kew, come along to EcoBuild in London on 3 March to hear me and Michael Pawlyn speaking with Nigel Stansfield, Director of Product Innovation at Interface Flor, and ex Grimshaw architect and visionary Gerry Tate.

Drop me a line if your organisation might be interested in getting involved with the BCI / Kew project.

Do change

Here's a flavour of what's in store for the Do Lectures 2010 participants - an edited version of the intro I gave at the 2009 event. The issues are the same, just a bit more urgent. If there's one event that you attend in the next five years, I'd make it this one. www.dolectures.com

Do Lectures 2009 from Andy Middleton on Vimeo.

Competition - like it or not

There's an interesting perspective in biomimcry which goes against what most people understand about evolution - that there's not much true competition in nature. Why not? It's too expensive on resources, and much more effective to find your niche, and exploit it so that you get an unfair advantage on your own turf.

Srth Goldin's quote "You don't have to like competition in order to understand that it exists. Your fair share isn't going to be yours unless you give the public a reason to pick you" goes along with this principle - giving people a reason to pick you can be because you stand out in an area that's yours.

Don't compete with others on their terms, do it on yours.