CAN BIOMIMICRY AND MANAGERIAL CONCEPTS COME TOGETHER? IN INDIA

Mr. R. Ganesh Msc-Pharmaconosy, MMS-Marketing, (SPPU University, Pune, Maharashtra), Ex Assistant Marketing Officer (Marketing Dept.). ...................................................................................................................... Manuscript Info Abstract ......................... ........................................................................ Manuscript History Received: 30 June 2020 Final Accepted: 31 July 2020 Published: August 2020

Biomimicry, is a new way to create technology, provides new perspectives and innovations for companies' strategies. 1990's onwards Biomimicry has been used in different fields such as architecture, product design, engineering and production processes. Biomimicry has a very long history from ancient times and managerial concepts were handled together in just a few studies. The main aim of this paper is to handle biomimicry and managerial concepts together and to bring a managerial perspective to biomimicry. A qualitative approach by exploring existing literature and relevant cases for biomimicry and selected managerial concepts. In order to correlate biomimicry and managerial concepts twelve propositions has been coined. This paper tries to correlate leadership and biomimicry in terms of harmonized individuals and teams and flexibility and courage ability of leaders. Concern to innovation, biomimicry is a powerful tool to accomplish and sustain innovation processes. On the other hand, biomimicry is a relevant concept of being an open system of companies and a significant tool of strategy formulation. Finally organization structure linked with biomimicry in terms of being organic, lean and selfreplicating. It also has significance to future research in sustainability issues. It is a guideline for companies to survive by mimicking nature. It helps in understanding the link between biomimicry and managerial concepts. Examples from Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj are sited to explain the propositions.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….... Introduction:-
Austrian Biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy in 1920s brought the relation between biology and management and correlated with General Systems Theory. Every organism was made of a system of complex elements in mutual interaction. To understand the parts of the system and the relation that exists between them. The world is treated as whole which maintains itself in dynamic equilibrium [13] .The development of biology science was correlated with management field. There is no one best approach to universalize a set of management principles. Organization structure [3] , modal technology [44] or combination of several contextual factors [23] was studied to explore how contextual factors affect management. In 1950s, entropy and negentropy concepts which are inspired from thermodynamics and biology fields became important and needed to be considered. Because of system approach and contingency approach forward that organizations consider their environment to challenge entropic effects and survive. These consecutive ideas lead to strategic management field inspire from natural selection process.
The environmental movements of the period have forced business to choose one of these two issues: the environment and economic growth. This obligation identified as the major reason for pessimist feature of the reports. However, this strict approach moderated in time. New approaches which meet economy and ecology at common points have been arisen [11] . Especially in last 10 years it has been pointed out that business may have a transformative role [12] . The present system of thought regards sustainability as a pre-assumption. It is believed that new economy will be shaped around this concept. Economic variables are not used alone as a performance measurement method any more. Environment and social variables have been added to performance measurements. Sustainability frame emphasizes a triple dimension which contains 3P (people, planet, profit) [38] . Business has a great power which can be used for transformation. Business can also direct this power towards what is good [16] .
Rules of nature will be a good guide to make this transformation real. After sustainability framework and environmental movements are adopted by many organizations, today they face virtuality and even digital transformation. This requires to observe the nature much more and implement some practices such as open source approach, open innovation strategies, sharing economy and so on. As is seen, since the beginning of management history, management field has benefited from biology through its history. This interaction between management and biology has begun with systems approach, it became strong with other contributions such as contingency approach, strategic management (based on view of natural selection), total quality management, population ecology, evolutionary economics, chaos and complexity theories, learning organization, environmental sustainability, open resources, sharing economics, etc. These kind of analogies are put managerial concepts across in a different way. Companies' growth struggle and their formulating strategies show similarity to laws for growth and development of biological systems. In this perspective, biomimicry is a way of thinking based on biological systems and models, too. Biomimicry has brought an insight in 3 dimensions; existence status in nature of beings, when beings satisfy their own needs, at the same time they have an approach which they satisfy needs of nature and efficient and adaptive sustainability characteristics of ecosystem in where beings live [18] . For this reason, this study is based on the association of management and biomimicry as a biological aspect to business by depending on the history that management and biology are integrated for a long while. Under all assumptions and gaps indicated above, the primary purpose of this paper is to handle biomimicry and some managerial concepts including leadership, innovation, organization structure and business strategy together, bring a managerial perspective to biomimicry and present a set of foresights about this linkage. Today, living with a nature and its rules became more important issue for companies. Nature is helping and moderating to companies to innovate more rational and reasonable goods and services. Therefore, establishing this relation is an important step for organizations mimicked nature. This effort makes the paper more valuable for the related literature.

Managerial Concepts
Biomimicry is to develop sustainability innovation strategies by inspiring by nature. The most important insight which biomimicry brings to organizations is to create a very suitable platform where innovation and sustainability together have a potential [18] .Actually in order to develop business models to search inspiration in nature is not new. However the novelty which comes with biomimicry is sustainable innovation approach, in other words to be at peace with every aspect with nature [18] . Biomimicry's main focus can be seen on product design; however it has some other reflections for business, e.g. organizations and team management. 'Swarm Intelligence' is one of the examples for these reflections [6] . To enhance perspectives of biomimicry for business simplications, we choose some managerial concepts. These are leadership, innovation, business strategy and organization structure. The reason for choosing them is to have several characteristics in common. They are basic dynamics for business survival and implicit concepts for companies all the time.

Leadership
What do we expect from today's leaders? Every person including academicians, students, employees etc. has a different answer to that question. Today, leaders are expected to understandand absorb sustainability first and then to establish a mentality for change in a good way both economically and socially [35] . As Mahatma Gandhi once stated: 'I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.' How can a leader get along with people and/or employees? or Is there a must to be a leader in an organization? Answers may come from nature via biomimicry. As discussed above, sustainability is one of the pre assumptions in today's business life. How can biomimicry help leaders to attain sustainability? Present day's one of inevitable element of success is team work. For a successful team work every team member must understand this motto: 'If every person in a team tries to be best, rather than the best person on the team, each individual will complete each other to achieve the goal.' [15] . If everyone in a team feels themselves that they have the responsibility; creativity and productivity may occur in an easy way. That situation will increase participation and objectivity when it is time to decision [19] . When 1034 we look at the nature, we can see the relationships are multifaceted. For example let's take a look at trees. In spite of the fact that they are competitors for getting the same nutrition from soil, they can live collaboratively [16] .
Collective intelligence is a kind of management to get things done via crowd wisdom. Wikipedia is a good example of collective intelligence. When you, as a volunteer, want to change something, you can. Centralized control cannot almost be seen [47] . However millions ofpeople all over the world use Wikipedia every day and when we use it we expect that it is true and we generally believe that it is. When considered for biomimetic leaders, they trust and use collective intelligence, rather than forcing members to obey the rules which come from the top levels [7] . We have to keep in mind that individuals alone are not enough to give direction to our future. They need organizations like networks to do so [17] .

Proposition 1: Biomimetic leadership helps teams harmonized as well as individuals harmonized.
Charles Darwin emphasizes the change: 'It's not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change.' [10] . In today's dynamic world organizations must be more aware towards environment. Uncertainty is one of the most remarkable characteristics of the future. Planning for uncertain future, especially in turbulent environments, is becoming a luxury for companies. Organizational flexibility becomes as a strategic option [41] . Flexible organizations have the power to live when there is a need for emergency like uncertain times [39] . A research in the 1990s about the importance of followership described the characteristics which make employees effective. Versatility is one of that characteristic. According to research, an organization environment must be a place where employees can participate in and initiate change; and in turn change must be seen as a challenging and rewarding part of the job. Versatility involves being able to deal with ambiguity [24] . Biomimetic leadership can help to build flexibility. Nature's way to provide flexibility is to have diverse, decentralized and distributed ecosystem. That method may apply to business life [4] . In that way organizations can find opportunities and solutions. So, we can formulate the proposition at below.

Example It is Never too Early-To Learn to Lead
Two great individuals who moulded the childhood of Raje through their environment and experience are Jijabai mother of the king and Dadaji Kondev. Early battles which Raje won boosted the morale of his troops. Battle with Afzal Khan the great general of the Mughals passed on a very strong message for his enemies. 'Action points mentioned by the author for practice is, first develop an honest and fearless mind and take personal initiative for your leadership success Proposition 2: Biomimetic leadership act as a catalyst to build flexibility (resilience). Organizations [33] can differentiate themselves through some activities. These activities are called core and support. Management infrastructure is one of these support activities. Management infrastructure contains all management process in organizations. If an organization success to create a different value for its customers, it will differentiate itself between the competitors. There is no doubt that innovation can be a differentiator for a company, then is it possible to infer that if companies realize innovation, should they pay regard to leadership? Can leadership be associated to innovation types? And is it possible to mimic nature as leadership style? [7] , points out two types of leading: Fear-based leading covers; authoritarian, leader-follower relation, motivated by power, blame culture, risk avoidance, competitive, command and control featured management styles. On the contrary, courage-based leading covers; freedom, co-creative relation, motivated by love, compassionate culture, pioneering and improvisational featured management styles. The world we live in now is different than past. Companies have to compete in an environment where future cannot be seen easily. Both companies and the people in the organizations should feel themselves free to move. When an organization uses courage-based leading, there will be an environment where employees feel themselves free to create and share. Productivity will occur. Hence in a suitable work place, it will lead up to innovation. New products and services created through innovation can open organization new ways and increase income. A similar insight can be seen in relationship between creative leadership and radical innovation. Radical innovation offers new benefits to the market. On the other hand firm can create new businesses. Therefore radical innovation involves high risk and high uncertainty in the firm [32] . If companies want to realize radical innovation, conventional leadership will not be enough for them. As pointed [7] out conventional leadership is inadequate in increasingly inter connected complex, unpredictable and volatile conditions. Creative Leadership is a dynamic approach which continually maintains the common vision, values and goals, considers changing conditions, endeavors to create an environment that will enable dynamic synergisms and co-creativity by using nature as a model for leadership principles and practices, because evolution has yielded organisms that are 1035 responsive, adaptable, resilient [7] . These observations about the role of leadership and innovation can lead to Proposition3.

Example Identify Right Mentors -Open Doors to Great Leadership
The seeds for developing this able leader were sown by his mother. The foundation for building the vision of Swarajya was invoked through the stories and the morals from the great epic of Mahabharata and Ramayana. Secondly, the trusted Sardar Dadaji Kondev who was Raje's coach guided him to take decisions which helped him win several battles. 'The author talks about how a person could help himself becoming a good leader talks about how one should be alert in picking up his or her mentors.' His life teaches an important lesson to the modern rulers: Why should a leader invest time in the people to groom the right persons once the quality of leadership is found in them.
Proposition 3: A leadership style which uses nature as a model will help to create an environment which is suitable for innovation, including radical type. This will lead organizations to differentiate themselves in different directions. This poem, considered to be a literary masterpiece, brings out the different dimensions and the noble character of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, as an ideal, determined, brave, courageous and kind King, in words that are powerfully rich and deeply meaningful. It also describes the achievements of this revolutionary personality in laying the foundation of the Hindavi Swarajya, in which Samarth Ramdas himself played an important role.

Example Leadership Qualities
An example of this is how readily his men like Baji Prabhu Deshpande and others volunteered to face even the likelihood of certain death at Ghod Khind to help Shivaji continue the fight of independenceeliciting such heroism from followers cannot be mandates, it can only be inspired by: Purity of character, Noble, Awe inspiring leadership and, A truly shared vision for homeland

Innovation
Innovation points a new idea where can be occurred as a product, process or service. As pointed out, [31] the likelihood of innovation can be intensified by the individuals as well as management practices. Because it is the individual who is the source of a new idea. Therefore creativity of people should not be failed to notice. 'Post-it's innovation process come from a very different process which we probably may call it a miracle. Although at that time 3M scientists were trying to create tougher adhesives, one of these scientists, Dr. S. Silver discovered an adhesive which stuck lightly to surfaces. This adhesive was not one of the adhesives which they wanted to discover. In that period of time another 3M scientist, A. Frywas suffering from little scraps of papers which were falling out of his hymnal. Then he decided to put Silver's adhesive on a scrap of paper in order to mark his hymnal. They both achieved to create sometihng extremely useful: Post-it [1] . It can be inferred from the Post-it case that variety of activities can enrich the creativity of people which is needed for innovation.When considered for biomimicry, Janine Benyus points out Nature's Laws. One of Nature's Lawsis diversity. Diversity has different subbranches. One of them is redundancy. Here redundancy means that when a piece of a system cannot manage to accomplish a goal, other pieces of the system can accomplish the goal in different ways. If we adapt diversity to business life [26] , diversity helps companies to build flexibility and to have optimized outputs [5] . As seen in Post-It case, maybe S. Silver could not achieve a goal (a though adhesive). However for the new adhesive A. Frywas could manage to find an area of utilization by following different point of view which can bring us to diversity. We can infer that if companies are willing to open for innovation, they should hire different people who have different habits and traits. If companies investigate nature's diversity, they will have a chance to open new doors for innovation way.
1036 These observations about the role of having different activities as an diversity law of nature can lead to Proposition 4

Example LeadershipQualities
An example of this is how readily his men like Baji Prabhu Deshpande and others volunteered to face even the likelihood of certain death at Ghod Khind to help Shivaji continue the fight of independenceeliciting such heroism from followers cannot be mandates, it can only be inspired by: Purity of character, Noble, Awe inspiring leadership and, A truly shared vision for homeland . Proposition 4: When companies take nature's diversity as an example, they will establish a creative environment for innovation. Biomimicry is a kind of solution discovery for business problems. From this point of view, Gojo Industries used biomimicry to drive environmentally sustainable product innovation [21] . As nature becomes a source of inspiration and as biomimicry is practiced in a deep way in companies, all processes including product/service innovation and development process have been affected by this view.

Example Open Mind and Open Eye -Adopt New and Beneficial Trends and Technologies
Maharaj always stressed on innovation and new technology. He studied this and equipped his soldiers with new weaponry. He also foresaw the importance of navy and built a powerful command over water. The author quotes the cycle of learning which is 'learn, unlearn relearn and experience.

Proposition 5: Biomimicry can be a powerful design tool in order to support sustainability-driven product/service development. Business Strategy and Strategy Formulation
All companies try to survive in their dynamic environment and to attain relatively higherperformance than their competitors. This challenging struggle requires different strategies andstrategy formulations. Since strategies make the companies different from each other as roactive or reactive. When we have a look strategy and biomimicry together, it is possible to establish some connections and relations between them. Biomimicry is interested in how companies are inspired from nature. Therefore biomimicry is also concerned about all living creatures' lives and their strategies to survive. From biomimicry perspective, all companies can be considered like a reature. They want to be an infinite entity and have to survive for this objective. Here is a point hat biomimicry perspective can help companies while formulating their strategies by finding similar things in the nature and matching the best sample for them. First of all, biomimicry observes the nature and ruminate about that all living creatures act like an engineer [2] . From this perspective, we can say that biomimicry considers the nature as a self-solved, self-challenging and selfdeveloped system because human engineers solve some technical problems, challenge to the environment, and develop their organizations with innovations by creating something for their companies. Similarly biomimicry design is inspired from the nature and offers some strategic solutions for companies.Based on learning organization perspective [37] , suggests that system thinking is one of disciplines required to be implemented in learning organizations. Accordingly, business world and all human efforts are systems. They are connected with actions related to each other. System thinking cut through all operations of business environment by examining these actions and analyzing each part of whole system rather than understanding the whole system holistically. It provides us to see the whole clearer. From this point of view, we can say that organizations are open to learn how they operate, develop and survive in dynamic environment. They are like complex adaptive systems [6] and try to understand the environment. For this, they inspire from the nature (as the largest system) and find survival strategic solutions tested before in nature. So, we can formulate the proposition at below

Example Planning and Management
Shivaji Maharaj was a torch bearer of good planning and management. The crux of planning is information. Shivaji Maharaj, in those times identified the need of an information and thus established one with much of monetary resources spent on the same. High salaries and maintenance of this department did not deter him as it was this information bureau that often furbished timely and accurate information to him. On the basis of this information that he received, he could always prepare well for the meetings with his counterparts. Shivaji Maharaj respected and gave importance to each of his devoted trustee's opinion and suggestions.

1038
Biomimicry is based on organizing type of the nature as a criteria to understand companies. It tries to match the nature with disposition of companies. Because companies and nature have similarities in terms of dynamic balance and each partner's roles. In addition to this, collaboration and competition issues at the nature coincide at the company's as well. In a similar manner, relationships based on personal interest are seen obviously in companies as well as in nature. The more complex business causes the more relationships and collaborations regarding personal interests.
Organizations have rely on specialization of jobs since early 1900s by hinging on principles of classical management theory. Nature has a structure which is based on specialization as well. Each part of a system has specific responsibility about its task, thus the system is operating well. This similarity may be a starting point to establish a relation between biomimicry and management concepts in terms of their structure. On the other hand, not only nature but organizations have a tendency to build up networks to share common sources and to be a part of networks. Organizations care their social power and legitimacy as well as economic fitness. Such efforts are called legitimacy and it is a subject for institutional theory. To the theory, as organizations gain legitimacy in their social environment, they makes similar to each other and start to be isomoporhed [9] . Just as organizations, ecosystem comprises many kind of isomorphic processes as well. These similarities may create a chance to connect biomimicry and management concepts Example Leave a Lasting Legacy for Future Generations to Build on When his mother Jijabai sowed the seeds for Swarajya in the mind of young Shivaji his father Shahaji helped him build the foundation of Hindavi Swaraj. His Swaraj was built on the pillars of humanity, values, ethics, management and leadership, so he would be remembered for all the generations in future for nation-building exercise undertaken by him and uniting people for the cause of Swarajaya. The king has left a legacy of good deeds, hard work and selflessness is a role model for a good leader in the modern world.

Proposition 9: Nature and companies have similarities in terms of structuring of organization.
The starting point of system approach is a biological view. The system approach supporters consider organizations as a living and open system, which takes inputs from the environment, process and transform them, and send them back to the environment as output or waste. Organizations [3] are divided into two kind of structures: mechanistic vs organistic. Mechanistic organizations are close systems and not related with their environment. They are characterized by formalization, specialization, centralization and hierarchical. However organic organizations are open systems and be in interaction with their environment, can adapt and change, and therefore can defy the effects of entropy. They are characterized by decentralization, flexibility, adaptiveness to changes, low specialization and horizontal communication. There are some departments of organic organizations providing flow of information with the environment via many ways. These departments are called as peripheral units. Having a look the structure of the nature, we observe similar characteristics that are relevant to adapt, change and survive. According to population ecology [14] , although there is a wide variety of an ecological perspective, they all focus on selection. That is, they attribute patterns in nature to the action of selection processes. Given that biomimicry is a benchmarking from the nature, it is possible to be able to explain nature and managerial concepts together considering structural form. From this perspective, it can be considered the nature as an enormous organic organization.

Origin of the Cabinet
Shivaji was an efficient ruler and administrator and ruled with a just and firm hand. His government had concepts that we know of now like the Cabinet known as Ashtapradhan Mandal, foreign affairs known as Dabir and also an internal intelligence wing Proposition 10: Biomimicry matches the nature with organic organization. The nature tries to eliminate all waste. It has no stocks because it is self-producing continuously when needed. Its self-producing nature resembles with just-in-time production as a tool of total quality management practices. The principles and law of the nature are also simple. All these features of the nature overlap characteristics of companies. Organizations can be considered as mimic living systems. Organizations try to be lean and simple to avoid waste activities as well. [41] . It is also about rightsizing issue. Organizations are in the search of optimum size for their activities. As they have complexity, the probability of entropic effects increases. To defy the effect, companies Discussion:-"Are you sure that will industry work well with nature?" written by Kevin Kelly in the book "Industrial Ecology". The solution is "In technology we see that the more we make processes more biological, the more they are secure for people and environment." [20] .Technology has lots of things to learn from biology. Biology is an important part of nature. Today we see the whole picture of nature. If we do not do business in spite of nature, there will be a win-win situation. Biomimicry can be a universal language that can be used by organizations in order to build business future.
Despite the fact that new product development is the most common output of biomimicry, the discipline has much more than this. Business people can make use of biomimicry by using nature's principles in order to create new business models, to answer core business questions For example when Philips Research decided to enter a new area which is Open Innovation, many people asked "How can we stand in a new business area and expand in that area?".

1040
When biomimicry professionals converted this question into biomimicry language, they found the answer hidden in collaboration. When there are two species fighting for the same hunt, competition shows up. However when they collaborate, the results become more positive. When collaboration strategies in nature are searched, it is seen that different species that have different strong powers make collaboration. Here the result from analysis becomes that a brand should make collaboration with another companies that do not resembles themselves [1] .
Biomimicry provides the platform for business innovators, managers, employees to have a look to the nature and generate ideas based upon its solutions. We tried to highlight the linkages business movement in new area oriented the nature and assess these linkages in terms of some managerial concepts. This may improve companies' ecological approach and make them to see the environment as the most important source. Nature is not a sum of scarce sources as if only it can be as a source of inspiration. Biomimicry brings with eco-design view for management of companies. We brought some propositions about the relationship between biomimicry and managerial concepts. We tried to correlate leadership and biomimicry in terms of harmonized individuals and teams and flexibility and courage ability of leaders. With regard to innovation, biomimicry is a powerful driver to accomplish and sustain innovation processes. And biomimetic leadership will provide an environment that is suitable for any type of innovation. On the other hand, biomimicry is a relevant concept of being an open system of companies and a significant tool of strategy formulation. Finally organization structure is linked with biomimicry in terms of being organic, lean and self-replicating This paper addressed a conceptual view and suggests that biomimicry as a toolkit which pushes the survival process of companies. This paper is important because literature lacks of studies regarding this linkage, especially in management field. For future research, these propositions can be extended and developed for other managerial concepts such as institutionalism, organizational ambidexterity, isomorphism etc. Another suggestion for the future researchers to carry out qualitative research. Expanded examples will allow to support the propositions as well as to provide basis for quantitative analysis.