A key principle of The Slingshot Framework is to harness the 'Innovation Shortcut' - combining traditionally separate resources or applying unconventional resources to create new value. And low and behold, animals are a great source of such innovation shortcuts.

One great example is from my visit to Santiago, Chile a few years ago. There, one of the business units of a B2B service company was providing pest control to municipal office buildings. Instead of using poison to quell the bothersome pigeon population, they hit on a much more simple, humane, and eco-friendly approach: They brough in a couple of falcons whose presence frightened away the pigeons. Where did the birds flee? To the top of the next office building. Naturally, the company then offered their services there, so that the process created a continuous loop of falcons chasing pigeons around the city and a brilliant, self-perpetuating business for themselves.

A more recent and equally ingenuous example is from the Czech Republic. Officials in the Brdy region had over a million dollars of funding for a new dam but were at an impasse due to the lack of needed building permits. To everyone's surprise, the dam was erected almost overnight by none other than a team of beavers.

From the National Geographic article: ""Beavers always know best,” Jaroslav Obermajer, head of the Central Bohemian office of the Czech Nature and Landscape Protection Agency, told Radio Prague International, which first reported the story. Their structures create habitat for scores of other species, such as aquatic insects, fish, and amphibians as well as larger creatures like herons, whooping cranes, moose, and bison. Beaver dams can also serve as natural firebreaks, carbon sinks, and they provide flooding control. Beavers are the original ecosystem engineers."

There you have it.  What animals can you recruit for your next innovation?

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/beaver-dam-czech-republic

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