
the bio.t METHOD
Our bio.t™ METHOD is a playbook that helps you through the process of re/designing your strategy, innovations and business model. Using Nature’s design thinking playbook.
Nature’s design thinking playbook works differently from human centered design. It gives you very different ways to diagnose, discover, design and deploy value potential, for unlocking your disruptive power. There are three things that set the bio.t™ METHOD apart.
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Most strategy and innovation frameworks ignore the science of life. Promoting "faster, newer, cheaper" games, that chase first-player advantage in a zero-sum, agile (and often aimless) world.
As global markets price in the materiality of the living world (‘natural capital’ is 3x the CO2 climate bubble), you run the risk of not only wasting time and money, you limit your potential.
The living world is where the biggest disruptive growth opportunities are, where the coolest innovation is happening, where most of the investment world is heading, and where incredible profit potential lives.
Leveraging patterns of biological value in the living world doesn’t just reduce your risk, it gives you a platform to build real strategic advantage, open up new markets and unlock multiple revenue streams.
You don’t have to be in biotech or have any science background. Nature’s bio-patterns can be applied by anyone, across any industry, or business unit division.
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The bio.t™ METHOD plays in the design thinking intersection of Biomimicry, Living Systems , and Living Relational Ethics. All seamlessly synthesized.
This is based on Melissa’s analysis and curation of 100 years of disruptive regenerative, living-system principles of how Nature designs, and her US MSc in Biomimicry. Calibrated specifically for business strategy and innovation.
Together they help you sense, seize and scale value potential. For you to directly apply to re/designing your business, and re/skilling your leadership capabilities.
Melissa’s done the deep thinking and heavy lifting so you don’t have to.
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Melissa is a practitioner, trained as a system-design strategist, who’s played hands-on, across multiple industries and businesses, to unlock value potential, from in the arena. She’s not an academic, talking head or reinvented ad-man.
Which means you get what works real life, real-time - the steps to follow, the questions to ask, and the models to use (and to avoid) from Melissa’s 25 years of transforming businesses (global corporates to start ups and NGOs), 15 years on the disruptive regenerative "bright" side, 10 years teaching and training exec teams and entrepreneurs, and 5 years deep diving into Nature’s design thinking playbook.
Made of 2 parts
THE PROCESS
The bio.t™ canvas journeys you through the process of re/designing your business.
Most people struggle with process. Especially when the tools we’re taught to use make the problem worse. The bio.t canvas looks different than other canvases because it is. It’s designed based on how Nature works.
(1) It is intentionally sequenced in hierarchical order, based on Nature’s disruptive adaptive “fitness from fittedness”. (2) It starts first with rooting yourself in the context of the living world and the lived experience of relationships to build your adaptive power. (3) Each part, in turn, explores and leverages deep biological patterns of unlocking value potential. Based on the blueprints and hardcoding that have underwritten life on Earth for the last 3.8 billion years. (4) Lastly, each part works to re/connect you, in relationship (to time, place, self, others etc). We lean into the tension - to build, what we call, your BQ™; your biological quotient. It’s the meta key.
As global markets disrupt to price in Nature’s living world, this process helps you make better strategic decisions on where to play, how to innovate, where to invest your time, tech and money, and how to build your complex adaptive resilience. And each part comes with a support toolkit, to make things easy.
THE PRINCIPLES
The bio.t™ compass is a leadership capability building framework. It curates and synthesizes biomimicry, living ecology, living ethics, living systems as design thinking principles.
NOT virtue signalling principles. Principles that reflect the deep patterns of how life functions, in living systems. They function as strategic levers of future value creation (the foundation of design thinking). They give you the thinking and practice tools you need to unlock value potential.
Nature’s design thinking playbook works in the intersection of these four axes. They play at the highest order of performance, efficiency, scalability, and adaptive resilience. They’re built on Melissa’s deep analysis of 100 years of regenerative disruptive living-system research, and the four axes from which Nature unlocks value potential.
Upskilling in these capabilities requires a re/connection to being in relationship. This builds your BQ™; your biological quotient, the meta key to level up your strategic practice.
why Nature’s design thinking playbook?
Because as global markets price in the materiality of the living world, there isn’t just huge risk. There’s huge opportunity. life centered design gives you the inside track.
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Most organizations are playing a Nature game driven by TNFD and SBTN governance disclosures. Considering their Nature footprint alongside their climate emissions.
But if we’ve adopted a compliance cost mindset, and tracking impacts, buying biodiversity credits, or planting offset trees, we’re kinda missing the point.
Despite political rhetoric, global markets are still rapidly pricing in the costs of Nature. So if we haven’t connected our strategy to the science of life, then the disruptive impact on our balance sheets and P&Ls will be big. Across every facet of our business.
The ‘natural capital’ bubble is 3x LARGER than the CO2 bubble (Stuchtey et al 2016).
But the bigger risk is we miss seeing the opportunity.
However, a rapidly emerging global movement of disruptors, strategists, innovators, researchers, and design thinkers are playing a bigger Nature game.
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The new, bigger Nature game is all about learning from Nature. To leverage Nature’s 3.8 billion years of evolutionary R&D intelligence.
WHY? BECAUSE…
Nature’s design thinking is not just regenerative, it plays at the highest order of functionality. High performance. High efficiency. High tech. Low cost. Low energy. High growth scalability.
Nature’s design thinking applies directly to business strategy, innovation and business model design, using hardcoding that’s proven to be robust enough to underwrite the very foundations of life.
Nature’s playbook lets you leverage the blueprints and working models that have been tried, tested and proven to work, for a really long time.
Cutting-edge businesses playing this new game are re/engineering anything from products, services and platforms to business models, value chains and operations.
They’re disrupting the shape of global markets, global industries, and the rules of the global economy.
WEF estimates it could create US$10 trillion in GDP growth and 395 million new jobs by 2030. And research show there is a 88%+ innovation gap between how biology designs and how humans design (Vincent and Mann 2011).
We are only at the beginning of our disruptive evolutionary journey.
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We guide you on the journey to re/engineer your strategy and innovations. No matter where you are right now.
We work with you in three ways: 1. Diagnostics. 2. Capability building. 3. Strategic transformation.
We give you the thinking models, tech tools and practice steps. And showcase what’s possible.
WHY WE LOVE THIS GAME
Because the rewards are big.
Because it applies to any business, across any sector, doing strategy or innovation (not just the biotech disruptors).
Because you don’t have to be a biologist, or even a design thinker, to do this. It only requires an entrepreneurial mindset.
Because it strengthens both your decision making (THINK) and executional performance (DO).
Because it opens up the potential for multiples. 1. Multiple new revenue streams, 2. Multiple new market creating, 3. Demand-led B2B and B2C growth, 4. Scalable growth, 5. De-risking, 6. Lower costs, 7. Capital flows, 8. More profit, and 9. you play at the highest order of sustainability.
And because frankly, it’s way more fun. It’s why we call it the bright side.
THE KEY TO UNLOCK THE DOOR
We’ve learned that unlocking your potential comes down to how you think about value. Because value is at the core of design thinking.
How to create, deliver, leverage and convert value
How to sense, seize, scale and transform value potential
Our research shows Nature works dynamically across not one, but four interdependent value axes i. Value flow. ii. Value regeneration. iii. Value exchange, and iv. Value potentiality.
So we give you the value levers to pull across all four axes. And you get to build the disruptive dynamic capabilities that matter, to unlock your growth potential.
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The t stands for Tensegrity. We originally called it the Tensegrity Method - but turns out, that was a bit of a mouthful!
Tensegrity is all about transformation - from leaning into tension. Tension is transformative. This is our adaptive flex; our adaptive opportunity.
Tensegrity is a design principle coined by Buckminster Fuller in reference to the tensional integrity of systems. The strongest systems only work when all parts are held in tension.
Nature favours tensegrity structures the most - from the structure of our DNA and cells, to the process of photosynthesis, to the shape of our our skeletal, muscular and myofascia systems, to the resilience of spider webs, birds’ nests and trees.
Tensegrity structures are the most effective, use the least materials and energy, and unleash the greatest transformative potential. Which directly relates to business in terms of performance, efficiency, growth scalability and disruptive power.
When we lean into the transformative power of tension, we unlock our disruption potential.
Which means we have to re/connect to be in better relationship. With life.
