Nature’s Blueprint: A Guide to Biomimicry and Decolonized Creativity in Business
I've been familiar with the concept of biomimicry for years, always intrigued by the way nature offers holistic solutions to complex problems. But it wasn’t until I read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s latest book, The Serviceberry, that something truly clicked. Her writing invited me deeper into the idea of reciprocity as a design principle, one that could transform not just how we live, but how we work and create. I have also been on my own decolonization journey, now five years in, which has led me down many paths of unlearning and remembering. One of the most significant aspects of this process has been the decolonization of creativity itself.
It made me wonder: what if our work as creatives wasn’t just a means of production, but a reflection of life itself? What if, instead of trying to fit our creativity into the rigid boxes of productivity, we let it breathe, root, bloom, decay, and regenerate the way nature does?
This is where biomimicry enters the conversation.
What Is Biomimicry?
Biomimicry is the practice of looking to nature’s designs, systems, and relationships to inspire more sustainable and harmonious ways of living and working. It asks: How does nature solve this problem? How do ecosystems thrive in collaboration, not competition? How do organisms adapt without extraction, destruction, or burnout?
Biomimicry isn’t about copying nature. It’s about learning from it.
In design, biomimicry has led to everything from energy-efficient buildings inspired by termite mounds, to water-harvesting materials modeled after desert beetles, to Velcro, which was born from studying burrs clinging to fur. But biomimicry doesn’t have to stay in the realm of product innovation. Its principles offer a blueprint for how we might reshape our relationship to work, creativity, and business.
Biomimicry invites us to study the patterns of forests, fungi, coral reefs, mycelial networks, and weather systems as models not only for innovation and design, but for how we collaborate, rest, lead, adapt, and create. These systems teach us about resilience, reciprocity, interdependence, and regeneration—values we can root into our creative ecosystems.
Some guiding principles of biomimicry include:
Use life-friendly chemistry: Work in ways that are non-toxic to your spirit, body, and community.
Adapt to changing conditions: Let your creative practice evolve with your life season, energy, and environment.
Be locally attuned and responsive: Design your business based on your own needs, values, and community, not external trends.
Integrate development with growth: Balance personal evolution with your business growth…no need to sacrifice one for the other.
Evolve to survive: Allow feedback and mess-ups to shape your next creative iteration.
By applying these natural principles to our way of working, we begin to see our creative practice as less of a hustle and more of an ecosystem, one that flourishes when it is rooted in relationship, reciprocity, and rhythm.
What Does It Mean to Decolonize Creativity?
You might be wondering why I’m speaking about both biomimicry and decolonizing creativity in the same breath. To me, they are deeply interconnected. Biomimicry asks us to reorient our relationship to the natural world; to see ourselves as part of it, not separate from it. Decolonizing creativity asks us to do the same with our inner world; to unlearn the extractive, hierarchical ways we’ve been taught to relate to our ideas, our work, and each other. Both invite us into a relational, reciprocal, and regenerative way of being. They offer a path back to wholeness: one through land and pattern, and one through story and soul.
To decolonize creativity is to gently, intentionally untangle our creative process from systems of domination, extraction, hierarchy, and control.
Colonized creativity tells us:
There’s one right way to create.
Your worth is tied to productivity.
You must constantly be visible, marketable, and optimized.
Slowness is failure.
There’s no room for rest, contradiction, or emotion.
These ideas didn’t come from our ancestral creative impulses. They were imposed. Colonization stripped creativity of its relationship to land, community, ritual, and soul. It turned art into product, artists into content creators, and imagination into output.
Decolonizing creativity means:
Reclaiming your creative instincts.
Honoring rest and nonlinear cycles.
Creating from a place of relationship, not domination.
Trusting emergence, intuition, and imperfection.
Remembering that art can be a living prayer, not a hustle.
From Colonized Creativity to Decolonized Expression
Colonized creativity tells us:
There’s one right way to create.
Your worth is tied to productivity.
You must constantly be visible, marketable, and optimized.
Slowness is failure.
There’s no room for rest, contradiction, or emotion.
These ideas didn’t come from our ancestral creative impulses. They were imposed. Colonization stripped creativity of its relationship to land, community, ritual, and soul. It turned art into product, artists into content creators, and imagination into output.
Decolonizing creativity means:
Reclaiming your creative instincts.
Honoring rest and nonlinear cycles.
Creating from a place of relationship, not domination.
Trusting emergence, intuition, and imperfection.
Remembering that art can be a living prayer, not a hustle.
From Colonized Mindsets to Regenerative Ways of Working
I talk with a lot of creatives, friends, collaborators, clients, and the same themes keep coming up. We sit together and name the invisible pressures, the voice in our heads that says we’re not good enough, not productive enough, not anything enough. So many of us have been trained to second-guess our instincts, to over-polish, to hold back before we even begin. We fear being wrong, not being the best, or not being seen at all.
There’s that sinking feeling when a post doesn’t get likes, or when something we poured our heart into doesn’t sell. The comparison spiral when someone else is doing it “better.” The belief that if something isn’t monetized or measurable, it doesn’t count. This is the inner architecture of colonized creativity, quiet but powerful systems that teach us to police ourselves long before anyone else has the chance.
And once we start to name this, we can begin to unravel it.
When I first began unraveling my relationship to creativity, I didn’t realize how much colonized thinking had taken root in me. I would push through exhaustion because I believed rest was laziness. I measured my worth by how much I could produce in a week, not how present or connected I felt. I often edited out the parts of me that felt too emotional, too spiritual, or too "out there" because I feared they wouldn’t be seen as professional.
The more I paid attention, the more I saw that my creativity was living inside a set of rules I hadn’t agreed to. Rules that came from systems built on extraction, control, and hierarchy.
Here are some ways the colonizer mind can show up in our creative process:
Forcing productivity even when we’re depleted.
Comparing ourselves constantly.
Treating creative work as a transaction.
Obsessing over output instead of presence.
Censoring ourselves to fit in or be more “professional.”
And here’s how we can shift into more regenerative, biomimetic ways:
Work when your body and energy say yes.
Share generously, without expectation.
Trust intuition, not just strategy.
Let your work be an offering, not just a product.
Honor imperfection, emergence, and change.
It’s a slow process…one of composting old beliefs and tending new ones. But like in nature, the beauty is in the transformation. The more we align our work with natural rhythms, the more alive our creativity becomes.
Biomimicry as a Map for Reclaiming Creative Ecosystems
Nature doesn’t rush. Nature doesn’t brand. Nature doesn’t market itself 24/7. And yet, nature thrives.
Let’s look at a few principles of biomimicry and how we can apply them to the way we work:
1. Nature Operates in Cycles
Seasons shift. Trees lose their leaves. Bears hibernate. Nothing blooms all year.
Applied to creativity:
Allow for seasons of ideation, growth, harvest, rest, and compost.
Honor creative winters as necessary, not shameful.
Build business rhythms that reflect your personal cycles (menstrual, energetic, seasonal).
2. Nature Wastes Nothing
In an ecosystem, death feeds life. What is shed becomes soil.
Applied to creativity:
Reuse past projects, ideas, and drafts as compost for new visions.
Let "failures" nourish new direction.
Share process, not just polish.
3. Nature Thrives on Diversity
Ecosystems are resilient because of their diversity. Monocultures are fragile.
Applied to creativity:
Celebrate your multifaceted creative voice instead of forcing a niche.
Build interdisciplinary collaborations.
Respect multiple ways of knowing and expressing.
4. Nature Collaborates Instead of Competing
Trees in a forest share nutrients through root systems. Mycelium connects the underground.
Applied to creativity:
Prioritize mutual support and resource-sharing over competition.
Co-create with others instead of trying to be a solo genius.
View other creatives as part of your ecosystem, not threats.
5. Nature Is Local and Contextual
What thrives in one biome may not work in another.
Applied to creativity:
Design your business and projects based on your unique environment, energy, needs, and community.
Let go of one-size-fits-all models and blueprints.
We often talk about decolonizing creativity or working in harmony with nature… but what does that actually look like in day-to-day practice?
These examples offer a glimpse. By applying biomimicry principles like operating in cycles or valuing diversity, and pairing them with a decolonized mindset that centers relationship, intuition, and rest, we begin to reimagine the very structure of how we work. It’s not just about new strategies, it’s about new values.
We move from grind to growth, from isolation to interconnection, from rigidity to rhythm. These shifts don’t just support our creativity—they help us build work that is life-giving, sustainable, and rooted in reciprocity with ourselves, our communities, and the earth.
Work in a way that reflects what we’re a part of, not what we’re trying to dominate.
Reconnecting to nature’s intelligence isn’t just about us feeling better in our work (though that’s a pretty good start). It’s about re-patterning the way we relate to creativity, each other, and the planet… from one of extraction and pressure to one of reciprocity and possibility.
When we model our creative ecosystems on nature’s principles, we build:
Businesses that are more resilient.
Collaborations that feel like kinship.
Ideas that regenerate themselves.
Solutions that support people and planet.
So what can you begin doing today?
Notice where your energy naturally rises and falls. Can you align your tasks or projects to your inner seasons?
Choose one biomimicry principle (like "waste nothing" or "diversity creates resilience") and apply it to your creative process this week.
Observe a pattern in nature and reflect on how it might inform your business model or team structure.
Let something rest. Let something compost. Let something bloom without forcing it.
Create a ritual that reminds you of your place in the larger web of life.
And if you’re feeling overwhelmed, start small. Even one tiny shift toward a more regenerative way of working is a seed planted. Trust that it will grow in its own time.
Reflection Questions:
Where does your creativity feel most colonized?
What would it look like to let your work follow a seasonal rhythm?
What species, landscapes, or ecosystems inspire your approach to business?
How can your creative work become part of a larger web of reciprocity?
Let’s remember:
We are not machines built to churn and grind.
We are living ecosystems… complex, intuitive, ever-changing.
And ecosystems don’t hustle. They adapt. They rest. They root. They bloom.
So let’s compost the old stories.
Let’s trust the seasons we’re in.
Let’s build ways of working that nourish us, connect us, and honor the wild intelligence within and around us.
Your creativity is not a commodity.
It’s part of the greater web of life.
Let’s rewild the way we work, together.
Until next time…
Natalie Brite | DoGoodBiz Studio
