The Materials Revolution

In the final essay of this series the gaps between biology and engineering are examined, and methods are suggested for crossing them. Creativity is seen as the essential, and TRIZ (the Russian Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) is recommended as the best set of methods both for stimulating creativity and for solving technical problems. When the catalogue of Inventive Principles of TRIZ is used to bring biology and technology to the same level of detail, the comparison shows that the similarity is only about 12%. The differences largely reside in the reliance of energy as a controlling parameter in conventional technology and the replacement of energy by information in biological systems. Although we might be moving slowly in this direction, a numerically based comparison such as this should provide more impetus.