Investing in 3.8 Billion Years of Research

I was fortunate to spend a good part of my mid-twenties underwater. Most of it was desert diving in the Red Sea. Led by Bedouin, camels carried our scuba tanks to largely untouched dive holes. On descent, we’d drift past vast living walls and often just head out into the deep blue. There was depth, risk, freedom and the constant possibility of seeing something unexpected.

I was there for the thrill of it, but also for the extraordinary beauty and diversity of marine life. Back then, I did not fully appreciate that I was also looking at the results of 3.8 billion years of research and development: materials, machines and systems that human engineering is only now beginning to understand.

Consider just three of the creatures we encountered. The sea urchin forms strong mineral structures in seawater and at ambient temperatures. The octopus distributes sensing and control throughout its soft body. The jellyfish moves, feeds and responds using remarkably little material or energy.

These creatures have spent hundreds of millions of years developing solutions to problems that industry is now spending billions trying to solve. Together they offer the foundations of an investment thesis.

The intelligence beneath the surface

Evolution does not work like a research department. It has no strategy document, chief technology officer or investment committee. It proceeds through variation, inheritance and selection, retaining capabilities that support survival and reproduction within particular conditions.

Across billions of years, that process has produced an immense body of functional intelligence. It is encoded in the structures organisms build, the chemistry they use, the energy they conserve, the information they exchange and the ways they adapt to changing conditions.

That intelligence does not reside only within individual organisms. A sea urchin’s structure makes sense in relation to the water, minerals, food and predators around it. An octopus’s intelligence extends through its arms, its suckers and the physical environment it explores. A jellyfish’s movement cannot be understood separately from the water whose vortices help propel and feed it.

Each creature is also embedded within a much larger system of competition, cooperation, predation, symbiosis, nutrient cycling and adaptation. The integrity of a diverse ecosystem does not come from one organism controlling the rest. It emerges from the relationships, feedbacks and dependencies between organisms and their physical environment. Diversity strengthens the system because different organisms perform different functions, respond differently to disruption and provide alternative pathways through which the system can continue to operate.

There are therefore two related levels of intelligence from which industry can learn. The first is the functional intelligence of the organism: how it builds, moves, senses, attaches, repairs and responds. The second is the system intelligence of the ecosystem: how diversity, feedback, cooperation and adaptation maintain the integrity of the whole.

Copying a biological mechanism may create a useful product. Understanding the wider system may help us build technologies, companies and portfolios that are less brittle, less extractive and better able to adapt. This is the deeper promise of biomimetics. It is not the imitation of a shape or the attachment of an animal story to an invention that already exists. It is the disciplined study of how living systems solve functional problems, followed by the translation of those principles into human technology.

Industry often responds to difficulty by adding more material, energy, machinery, computation and central control. The creatures we encountered underwater frequently achieved much more with much less.

The sea urchin: material intelligence

The sea urchin appears almost motionless until you look closely. Its spines move, hundreds of tube feet extend between them, and its mouth contains five jaws with teeth that continue to grow as their working surfaces wear away. Its rigid outer shell is assembled from interlocking plates of calcium carbonate. Its spines are also mineral structures, but their porosity delivers low weight combined with mechanical performance.

The most interesting lesson is not what these structures do, but how the urchin forms them. Much of modern industry produces strong mineral materials through extreme conditions. We quarry and crush raw materials, transport them over long distances and process them in furnaces operating at very high temperatures. Performance is achieved through heat, pressure, chemical additives and large amounts of energy.

The sea urchin builds its mineral structures in seawater, at ambient temperature and pressure. Living cells control where mineralisation begins, how crystals grow and how they are organised. Proteins and other organic molecules help regulate the process, guiding calcium carbonate into structures whose geometry, orientation and porosity vary according to function.

The result is not a uniform mass of mineral. It is a composite structure in which mineral and organic components work together across different scales. Microscopic crystal organisation supports the larger architecture of plates, pores, spines and teeth. The material and the structure are formed together, with local variations introduced according to the demands placed upon them.

Biological material formation is therefore inseparable from biological design. The organism does not manufacture a standard block and then cut away everything it does not need. It grows the structure closer to its final form, placing material where it performs a function and retaining porosity where solid mass would add weight without providing an equivalent benefit. The architecture of urchin spines also helps manage failure. Their porous internal structure can redirect or contain fractures, allowing damage to develop progressively rather than causing the whole spine to fail without warning. [Journal of Bionic Engineering](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1672652908601250)

The teeth go further still. Researchers have found harder and softer regions arranged so that wear helps preserve an effective cutting edge. In effect, the internal architecture allows the tooth to remain functional because of the way material is lost. Pause on that. Industry normally treats wear as deterioration. The sea urchin uses wear as part of the design. [Advanced Functional Materials](https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adfm.201001546)

These properties challenge several assumptions embedded in conventional manufacturing. Porosity does not necessarily mean weakness. Wear does not have to mean simple decline. Strength does not require uniform density, and complex mineral structures do not necessarily require extreme heat and pressure.

The industrial possibilities extend beyond copying the shape of a spine. Urchin-inspired principles may contribute to lightweight structural components, ceramics that fail progressively rather than catastrophically, cutting surfaces that retain their function through controlled wear and additive manufacturing systems that place material only where it is mechanically required.

The deeper frontier lies in biomineralisation itself: growing functional materials under benign conditions, reducing high-temperature processing and potentially incorporating carbon into stable mineral structures. Translating that process into industrial manufacturing will be difficult. Sea urchins grow slowly within tightly controlled biological systems, while a factory must produce large volumes reliably, quickly and at an acceptable cost. Mimicking the result may prove easier than reproducing the process that created it.

The direction is nonetheless compelling. Industry has spent centuries learning how to force materials into shape. The sea urchin suggests that we might also learn how to grow them, creating more performance from less material, less energy and more considered formation.

The octopus: embodied intelligence

The octopus is visibly intelligent, but its intelligence does not resemble ours. It investigates the world through touch and chemistry, changes colour and texture, and moves through openings scarcely larger than its beak. Each arm can bend, twist, extend and grasp without bones or conventional joints, while its suckers attach, sense and manipulate.

A large proportion of its neurons are located outside its central brain, particularly within its arms. Control is distributed through the animal. The brain does not need to calculate and command every movement in advance because the body itself helps solve the problem.

Whereas traditional robots separate their functions into hardware, sensors and software and work well in structured environments containing predictable objects the octopus offers a different architecture.

A compliant arm conforms to the object it encounters, while its suckers create many local points of contact. Sensing occurs through the same surfaces used for manipulation, and the mechanical properties of the body reduce the number of decisions that the central control system must make. Put simply, if the body is designed properly, the machine does not need to calculate everything.

Research in soft robotics has advanced into flexible manipulators, stretchable sensory limbs, sensorised suction systems and devices capable of attaching to wet, moving or irregular surfaces. Octopus-inspired adhesives are being explored for cardiac monitoring, drug delivery and other medical applications. Adaptive materials inspired by the skin of octopuses, squid and cuttlefish are also pointing towards surfaces capable of changing appearance or function.

The opportunities extend across surgery, prosthetics, food handling, textiles, underwater inspection and the maintenance of marine infrastructure. An octopus-inspired manipulator can adapt its shape to fruit, fabric, delicate tissue, pipework or an irregular component without requiring the environment to be redesigned around the machine.

This becomes increasingly important as automation moves beyond tightly controlled factories and into the disorder of the real world. The commercial opportunity is not simply a better robotic arm. It is an alternative approach to intelligence in which sensing, control and adaptation are distributed throughout the body of the machine. The fabulous octopus shows us that softness need not be the opposite of capability. In the right system, softness is the capability. That is the basis of its embodied intelligence.

The jellyfish: energy intelligence

The jellyfish has no rigid skeleton, no centralised brain and nothing resembling an engine, yet it moves, feeds, senses and survives. Its body deforms with the surrounding water, creating vortices that contribute both to propulsion and feeding. What appears to be very simple movement is remarkably economical and undoubtedly beautiful.

Conventional underwater machines usually treat the surrounding environment as resistance. They require rigid hulls, motors, propellers, batteries and control systems powerful enough to overcome drag, currents and pressure. A jellyfish does not overcome the water in the same way. Its compliant body and rhythmic movement work with the surrounding water, effectively making the environment part of the mechanism.

Researchers are now developing jellyfish-inspired robots for underwater observation. Some employ transparent or soft structures that reduce disturbance to the environment being monitored. Others use low-power or bistable actuators that consume energy when changing state rather than continually using energy to maintain their form.

Their future may not lie in replacing highly capable autonomous submarines. It may lie in enabling large populations of simpler devices that drift, pulse, observe and communicate across estuaries, coastlines and open oceans.

A single device may be less capable than a conventional autonomous vehicle. But thousands of inexpensive, low-energy devices could collectively provide something the larger machine cannot: persistent and distributed observation across an enormous and constantly changing environment.

The same creature offers possibilities beyond movement. Jellyfish mucus has shown an ability to capture extremely small plastic particles from water. Laboratory research has reported substantial removal of nanoplastics, suggesting a possible route towards filtration or water-treatment applications, although the path to a scalable commercial system remains uncertain. [Science of the Total Environment](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969723004394)

That uncertainty matters because biological performance does not automatically become industrial performance. The finding nonetheless demonstrates how much capability may be hidden within a creature most people regard as little more than a nuisance at the beach.

The jellyfish achieves movement, feeding and response with remarkably little material or energy because its body, behaviour and environment function as a single system. Its energy intelligence lies in working with surrounding flows rather than expending ever more power trying to overwhelm them.

The pioneers

These ideas did not emerge from nowhere. In the middle of the twentieth century, Otto Schmitt used the term “biomimetics” to describe the transfer of ideas from biology into technology. In Britain, Julian Vincent became one of the foundational figures in the study of biological materials, examining how bone, wood, insect cuticle and other living structures achieve exceptional performance through hierarchy and organisation. George Jeronimidis helped establish biomimetics as an interdisciplinary engineering field, particularly through his work on plant structures, composite materials and adaptive architecture. Their generation demonstrated that biology could be read not only as natural history, but also as engineering knowledge.

Janine Benyus then gave the modern movement its language and public imagination. Her 1997 book, *Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature*, brought the idea into universities, design studios and boardrooms. With Dayna Baumeister, she helped turn biomimicry into a repeatable practice built around a deceptively simple question: what in the natural world has already solved the problem we are trying to solve? The Biomimicry Institute and its AskNature platform have since helped make biological strategies accessible to designers and entrepreneurs around the world. [Biomimicry Institute](https://biomimicry.org/janine-benyus/)

Other pioneers have carried particular principles towards application. Robert Full’s research into animal locomotion helped show how the mechanical properties of a body can stabilise movement before a central controller intervenes. Joanna Aizenberg pioneered adaptive materials and slippery surfaces derived from biological principles. Cecilia Laschi brought the octopus into the robotics laboratory and helped establish octopus-inspired soft robotics as a serious field of engineering. John Dabiri revealed the fluid dynamics behind jellyfish movement and applied those insights to underwater systems, cardiovascular research and energy. In 2025, Dabiri received the US National Medal of Science. [Caltech](https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/john-dabiri-awarded-national-medal-of-science)

From the finance perspective Hansjörg Wyss is especially important. He financed an institution designed to translate biological insight into practical technology. Beginning with a $125 million gift in 2009, Wyss supported the creation of Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. Further gifts took his total commitment beyond $700 million. Today, Harvard reports the institute’s work had generated 4,702 patent filings, 156 licensing agreements and 73 startups. [Wyss Institute](https://wyss.harvard.edu/)

The model brings together disciplines that universities and markets often keep apart: biology, engineering, medicine, industrial experience, intellectual property and company formation. It provides part of the bridge between discovery and deployment, but even after all this work, that bridge remains remarkably narrow.

The missing opportunity

Investors are not completely ignoring technologies derived from biological understanding. Soft robotics, advanced materials, engineered biology, medical devices and ocean technologies all attract capital. The problem is that investors usually arrive after a biological discovery has been translated into a category they already recognise.

An octopus-inspired manipulator becomes robotics, an urchin-inspired structure becomes advanced materials and a jellyfish-inspired monitoring device becomes ocean technology. The resulting company may attract investment, but the process capable of systematically generating further companies remains largely outside the investment system.

Capital finances the outputs but rarely invests in the search. Venture capital waits for the pitch deck. It does not usually go diving for the idea. Before a conventional investor becomes interested, someone must identify an unusual biological capability, understand its mechanism, separate the transferable principle from the organism and connect it to a significant industrial problem. Someone must then demonstrate that the principle can operate outside the organism, outperform an incumbent technology, survive industrial conditions and be manufactured at an acceptable cost.

That journey is long, uncertain and profoundly interdisciplinary. It does not sit comfortably inside a university department, a conventional venture fund or a corporate research programme. **The missing actor sits somewhere between a research institute, a venture studio and a specialist investment fund. Rather than waiting passively for biomimetic companies to arrive, it actively searches for them.**

The two maps

The investment process begins with two maps. The first maps significant industrial problems. Where are we using excessive quantities of material? Where are we consuming energy to overcome natural forces? Where do rigid machines struggle with soft, wet or irregular objects? Where do products fail through fracture, fouling, corrosion or wear? Where are we dependent upon toxic chemistry, extreme temperatures or increasingly complex central control?

The second maps biological capabilities. How does a sea urchin form strong mineral structures without a furnace? How does an octopus manipulate an unfamiliar object without a rigid skeleton? How does a jellyfish move through fluid on so little energy? How do other living systems repair damage, capture particles, attach underwater, regulate temperature, repel contamination and respond to change?

The investment platform searches for valuable intersections between the two. At each intersection, it assembles the relevant science, brings in the industrial problem-owner and tests whether the biological principle can deliver a meaningful advantage. Where that advantage survives technical and commercial scrutiny, the platform finances translation, forms or backs the venture and helps carry the technology into industrial use. This is more venture origination rather than ordinary venture selection.

The discipline beneath the wonder

Nature-inspired does not automatically mean useful, scalable or sustainable. Some ideas are attractive analogies but weak technologies, while others perform beautifully under controlled laboratory conditions and fail when exposed to salt, dirt, variable temperatures or repeated use.

A biological mechanism may offer excellent technical performance while requiring a manufacturing process so complicated that its economic and environmental advantages disappear. Sometimes there is simply no sufficiently urgent customer problem.

A serious biomimetic investment process tests at least seven things:

1. Biological insight. Is the relevant mechanism genuinely understood?

2. Functional advantage. Does its translation materially improve performance?

3. Industrial relevance. Does it solve a sufficiently important and expensive problem?

4. Manufacturability. Can the technology be produced reliably, affordably and at scale?

5. System value. Does it reduce overall material, energy and environmental pressure, or merely move the burden elsewhere?

6. Platform potential. Can the underlying principle generate multiple products, applications or markets?

7. Reciprocity. Does the model return value to the living systems, knowledge and custodians that made the innovation possible?

The strongest opportunities will not simply resemble nature. They will reproduce a functional advantage that conventional engineering struggles to achieve.

The thesis

Living systems contain functional intelligence accumulated through billions of years of experimentation, much of which remains commercially untranslated. A specialist investment platform creates value by systematically identifying biological capabilities, matching them to significant industrial problems and financing their translation into scalable technologies.

That is only half the thesis. If the result is another process through which humans extract value from the living world while returning nothing, we will have learned the wrong lesson from nature. A genuinely biomimetic investment system must be reciprocal: discover biological intelligence, translate it into industrial value and return part of that value to the living systems from which it came.

The commercial and ecological propositions reinforce one another. Protecting diverse living systems preserves the biological capabilities from which future discoveries may emerge. Scientific research makes more of those capabilities understandable and applicable. Successful industrial translation generates returns that can support further discovery, protection and restoration. This circularity is not an optional philanthropic addition. It is part of the investment thesis.

The thesis applied

To make the approach tangible, we can apply the two maps to the marine trio.

Sea urchin: the materials platform

The first map identifies industrial problems involving excessive material, high-temperature mineral processing, brittle failure and tools that rapidly lose their working edge. The second identifies the urchin’s capabilities: ambient mineral formation, hierarchical structure, controlled porosity, progressive failure and self-maintaining teeth.

Where the maps intersect, a potential investment pipeline emerges. It includes lightweight structural components, graceful-failure ceramics, self-sharpening cutting surfaces, additive manufacturing systems, low-temperature mineralisation and carbon-storing materials.

The platform does not ask whether we can manufacture something that looks like an urchin. It asks which of the urchin’s material strategies can produce a measurable performance, cost or environmental advantage over an incumbent technology. The strongest applications combine several forms of value, including lower material use, lower manufacturing temperatures, longer useful life, reduced maintenance and safer modes of failure.

Octopus: the embodied-intelligence platform

The first map identifies environments in which rigid automation performs badly, including surgery, food handling, textile manufacturing, underwater maintenance, fragile products and irregular components. The second identifies the octopus’s capabilities in soft manipulation, wet adhesion, local sensing, distributed control and adaptive surfaces.

Their intersection produces opportunities in medical adhesives, flexible surgical devices, adaptive grippers, underwater inspection systems, prosthetics and machines capable of responding locally rather than routing every decision through a central controller.

Several of these technologies already work in laboratories and prototypes. The investment task is to determine which address problems valuable enough to support scalable businesses, and which possess capabilities broad enough to become platforms rather than specialised products.

Jellyfish: the low-energy ocean platform

The first map identifies the extraordinary cost of observing, understanding and maintaining the ocean. Conventional ocean monitoring depends upon satellites, ships, buoys, autonomous vehicles and expensive instruments. Each is important, but the ocean is too extensive and dynamic for a limited number of sophisticated assets to provide all the information we need. The second map identifies the jellyfish’s capabilities in compliant propulsion, efficient interaction with fluid flows, simple distributed sensing and useful function achieved with very little material or energy.

Their intersection produces a different architecture for marine intelligence. Instead of building one machine capable of doing almost everything, the platform investigates systems composed of thousands of simpler devices that drift, pulse, measure and communicate. Those systems could monitor temperature, acidity, water quality, biodiversity, fisheries, plastics and marine infrastructure over long periods and large areas. They may work with ocean currents and available energy rather than continually fighting them.

Jellyfish mucus provides a second area of investigation around particle capture and low-energy filtration. It remains an early and uncertain opportunity, but it demonstrates how several distinct industrial capabilities may be contained within a creature that has attracted remarkably little commercial attention.

Nature2Future

The pioneers have given us the science, the language, a growing library of biological strategies and several remarkable technologies. What they have not yet built at sufficient scale is an investment system that begins with biology and actively originates the companies that may follow from it.

Scientists are increasingly able to understand the capabilities that living systems have developed, and engineers are beginning to translate them. What remains missing is the capital system designed to bring the relevant biology, engineering, industrial demand and investment together.

Nature2Future is our proposal for that system. It begins with the two maps: the problems industry urgently needs to solve and the capabilities living systems have already evolved. Where those maps intersect, new technologies, businesses and investment opportunities emerge.

The sea urchin demonstrates how stronger materials may be formed with less heat and waste. The octopus demonstrates how sensing and control can be distributed through the body of a machine. The jellyfish demonstrates how movement and environmental monitoring may be achieved with very little energy. Nature has completed much of the foundational research. Nature2Future would invest in its translation.

This essay began as a line of enquiry developed through the work on Value2Society. ChatGPT was used as a thinking and editorial partner, testing the argument, challenging its edges and helping shape it for publication.