Ethan Smith’s background includes product design and development, web design and development, graphic design, photography, writing, business strategy, expedition planning, and creative direction. He has worked with Nau, Eddie Bauer, and XPLANE. Today, he works for the Biomimicry 3.8 Institute, where he is the Director of AskNature. He seeks to train innovators to emulate the 3.8 billion years of design and strategy of nature in a sustainable way.

On the show, Ethan talked a lot about how firms can apply biomimetic thinking to their problems. This has certainly taken root in design firms and architects, but it is also quite applicable in other industries. The basic, universal takeaway is that innovators should consider taking a step back from their problems, and instead of asking “how would nature build an engine?” for example, an innovator can ask “how would nature create movement?” The process of applying biomimicry to innovation, according to Mr. Smith, is all about framing questions in terms of function, and then seeing how nature accomplishes those goals. To this end, Biomimicry 3.8 teaches the skills of applying biomimicry, but also compiles a large database of functions that nature accomplishes, from the microbe level to the organism level, in order to make this process available to all, even those without a background in biology or natural sciences.