On September 25th more than 400 attendees packed The Cleveland Institute of Art to hear Janine Benyus, co-founder of the Biomimicry Guild, introduce a new source of design inspiration.

This was the kick-off event for a year long focus by E4S and its latest regional sustainability effort—Cleveland+ Biomimicry Design Collaborative—to seed Biomimicry into the regional design DNA and create what might be the first regional effort to put these revolutionary ideas to work to rebuild our economy.

Janine actually packed-in five events in 24 hours, interacted with many businesses on the sustainability path and toured the Cuyahoga River Valley. She left us with many idea seeds for new businesses, designs and fresh nature inspired viewpoints on our current assets, E4S writes in its latest email.

Jim Hartzfeld, InterfaceRAISE introduced Janine to the E4S Network. While in Cleveland he shared the knowledge and tools to transform technology and culture with several local companies who want to implement sustainability. His work on sustainability at Interface for over 12 years makes him a global leader. We hope both Jim and Janine will return to visit the E4S Network over the next year.

If you’re interested, check out this upcoming E4S networking event and this October 9th event to lay out the vision of the Biomimicry Design Collaborative. And mark down this Cleveland Biomimicry Workshop in January, 2008.