Reprinted by permission of Dayna Baumeister and the Biomimicry Institute

Biomimicry (from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate) is a new discipline that studies nature's best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems. Studying a leaf to invent a better solar cell is an example. Think of it as "innovation inspired by nature."

Systems Thinking in Action:
Fueling New Cycles of Success
November 8-10, 2010
Boston Marriott Copley Hotel
Boston, Massachusetts


In designing this year's Systems Thinking in Action® Conference, "Fueling New Cycles of Success," we've assembled a stellar line-up of speakers and other contributors to introduce and explore proven tools, inspiring ideas, and hard-fought lessons for accelerating momentum in a positive direction. Here are links to a few clips to spark your thinking about this year's theme. We'll be adding videos of many of the conference contributors throughout the summer.

Frances Moore Lappé, author of Diet for a Small Planet and democracy advocate
Daniel H. Kim, Pegasus cofounder and systems thinking pioneer
Kelvy Bird, artist and graphic recorder

Register now for the conference. Teams save even more. Contact Mark at 1-781-398-9700 for information about team discounts.

By Mark Graban

An editorial written by an American Airlines pilot in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram caught my attention ("Unintended consequences of the Passenger Bill of Rights"). The pilot makes the case that Congress's actions to prevent multi-hour passenger delays on the tarmac give the airlines incentive to proactively cancel flights rather than face the risk of million-dollar fines for a single flight. The result is that, rather than simply being delayed, passengers end up stranded, often not able to book another flight until the following day.

The pilot writes: "The Passenger Bill of Rights is the wrong answer to the right question that demonstrates two important points. First, a simplistic legislative solution is completely inadequate to a complex problem like tarmac delays.

And second, for all who lobbied for this legislation based on a handful of overpublicized and anecdotally enlarged tarmac tales, when you're in line waiting to rebook your travel, remember that you got what you asked for: You're not waiting on the tarmac. You're simply not going anywhere."

Well-intended actions often lead to unintended consequences. This is a core lesson of the system dynamics field popularized by Peter Senge in his book The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization. I was fortunate to take a course on this topic during my graduate studies at MIT. We learned many lessons of simple actions that, while locally helpful, made the system worse.