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Sutton Speakers explain how nature is a model for businesses

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

BY COURTNEY CONDRON

Daniel Arneman, the principal carbon strategist for the University of North Carolina, asked the audience at the annual Sutton Lecture, how would nature make a car? And then he showed them the box fish.

Mercedes Benz engineers have created a car that gets around 80 miles per gallon, modeled after the small, fast fish. The shape of the box fish that was used for the car creates a low drag coefficient at 0.19, and reduces the weight of the car while increasing the stiffness, according to gizmag.com.

This is just one example of how biomimicry, or studying nature's best ideas, can lead to innovative products. The Sutton Lecture on April 20, sponsored by the KU International Center for Ethics in Business, the KU School of Business and the KU Net Impact student organization, brought three speakers to campus to talk about biomimicry at the lecture titled "Sustainable Business: Innovation and Design Inspired by Nature." The KU Student Senate and Department of Design also provided support for this lecture.

In addition to Arneman, Kevin Stack, owner and president of Northeast Green Building Consulting, and Asheen Phansey, president of Quaking Aspen, LLC, offered insight into this topic.

Stack showed how he harvests rain water, so that he doesn't have to pay for his water, and used the wood from an old, collapsing barn to create top-notch wood floors and cabinets in the homes he builds. The next big thing, he said, could be house paints created like the blue morpho butterfly, that don't actually have color but create their own color depending on how the lights hits them.

Phansey talked about the relationship between organisms and enterprises. He said they both needed the same thing to survive: nutrients, energy, catalysts and information.

"The goal is to grow rapidly and capture available nutrients before someone else does," Phansey said.

Before the speakers came to the stage, seven School of Business students were recognized as the Positive Code of Conduct R.E.S.P.E.C.T Award winners. The students were: Estefania Bruzzone, Todd N. Dorsey, Paul Kim, Phillip Linville, Justin Lueger, Nina Luo and Christina L. Tuohy.

The Sutton Lecture Series is made possible by a gift in 1993 from Betsey G. Sutton in memory of her husband, Walter Sutton.

The KU International Center for Ethics in Business is a cooperative effort by the School of Business and the College of Liberal Arts. The Center aims to promote individual and corporate integrity in both U.S. and international business through research, service and training on ethical principles and be...