I was invited to do an introduction for Janine Benyus’s work. She’ll be leading  a lecture about the second principle of the Earth Letter as an essential criteria for the development of a green economy, inclusive and responsable.

It’s a 30 minute lecture and my idea is to organize some of her main thinking points. To have the opportunity of presenting Janine Benyus’s work, she being a great bionic’s studious and disseminator – a reference in this particular universe – is a great honor and an incredible opportunity to exchange information and living experiences.

The hole event will be very special, particularly for those working with design or even having an interest in business focused sustainability. On thursday – may 13^th, there’ll be some very interesting lectures. It’ll be a good thing, being a design representative in this conference.

Last year, in the event’s last edition, i made a lecture on bionics. And this year, once again, i’ll be there representing a design that  has a fundamental role in this redesigning scenario of our relationship with the planet.

When i got the invitation – wich, by the way, got me really excited – i asked for permission to show another vision of bionics. To search in nature not only mechanical solutions but – and mainly so – “philosophical” ones! To try and understand a little bit about natural creative intelligence! How nature thinks!!

I understand that, in face of the many challenges we’ll be up against in the near future, regarding “redesigning” our way of life in this planet, this represents an infinite source of inspiration in order to approach problems in a completely sustainable way; after all, nature has been improving projects for over four billion years, with a tremendous proficiency concerning energy saving and matter, reutilizing all its residuals and, above all, considering the innerdependence as base for its solutions sucess!!

With this class, i hope to be able to awake inside each student a curiosity about this discipline that is so poorly explored in design schools all over the world. Make them understand that this could be a precious source of inspiration for “inovating in a sustainable way”, but hopefully and above all, that bionics can open a hole new dimension in regards to the meaning of our careers, just as it did for me twenty three years ago! (My graduation project in PUC’s Industrial Design was about nature’s way of packing things, studing the planet’s atmosphere, the woman’s womb and fruits, all of them representing examples of nature’s smart way of packaging!).

A workshop with almost 50 people – including criatives, planning and attendings from 10 different expertise type agencies that attend to Natura’s Eko brand – was held yesterday, from 2pm till 8pm, in São Paulo.

We – that is me, Tânia Savaget (inspiration and strategy core director), her pupil Rafa Todeschini, Fê Saboia (criation director), and Erika Martins (senior graphic designer) – had the task of conducting the meeting, proposing a criative direction for all comunication initiatives that the brand’s gonna make next year. We’ve worked intensively over these last few days (and nights!), in order to find the “focus” of inspiration that could guarantee to one of Naturas’ most important portfolio brands,a position that translated consistently and truthfully everything that this completely original and revolutionary brand has been doing over the last ten years.

It was an amazing experience and  only the first step in a partnership that is probably gonna last throughout the year. And the trully special thing was starting the “Branding 3.0” presentation and realizing that, much earlier that we could ever imagine, we’d be gathering the tips of our pure research work regarding branding and susteinability, with our day to day delivery!

And since it was amazing to feel that, inspite of all the hard work -  including some overnighters – it had all been running smoothly, lightly and joyfully!! the atmosphere that could be quite delicate, since we were there – in a certain way – to direct the criative process of so many agencies, was actually quite positive with the active participation, including  criative colaboration of everyone and the distinct feeling that, starting from a bold proposition from Renata Puchala and Pedro Harigoshi, our brand responsible clients were all living in that moment, a revolutionary experience into the contruction path of a sustainable brand!!!

Gimme some more of that!!!!

The main sectors are the renewable sources one, the woodland one, the sanitation one, the material management one and the transportation and telecommunications one. Amongst the job descriptions inside the area are the enviromental risc assessment analysts, the green developers and the ecodesigners. These last ones, in our opinion, shouldn’t even be called that. In a very near future, not to mention right now, every designer will be an eco one and will design sustainable solutions.

Since October 2^nd, when I started to join Natura’s first multi disciplinary forum formation experiences for the construction of knowledge.

The first Scientific Forum – Sustainable Technologies was formed by me and three other UNICAMP teachers, each one with specialties in both Ecological Economics and Evolutionary economics’ areas. The Forum’s work started with a presence meeting on October 2^nd in Cajamar, Natura’s headquarters, which lasted all day long.

In this occasion, each one of us made a 45 minute presentation; then, along with the main representatives from Natura’s sustainable technologies researchers’ team, there was a round of discussion focusing on Natura’s environmental impact program’s main topics, from packages to business’ models.

After this workshop, the second phase start has been given, what they referred to as Wikishop, gathering meetings and information’s exchange through the web.

The first virtual meeting happened this Thursday, October the 27^th.

I’ll tell you guys a little bit more later on…