Permaculture and TRIZ - methodologies for cross-pollination between biology and engineering

Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) was developed due to analysis and mostly for dealing with artificial engineering systems in 1950 th of the twentieth century. Permaculture was developed as a method of engineering of artificial natural living systems in 1970 th of last century. Permaculture (which is portmanteau word ‐ PERMAnent + agriCULTURE) is ecologically balanced agriculture or ecological engineering and architecture of artificial superproductive ecosystem, which requires minimum of human interference and create minimum of negative environmental impact. Permaculture designs living eco-systems like engineers design and operate machines made of inanimate materials. Both methodologies were developed independently, but have a lot in common. In our paper we are going to compare these methodologies and show the points of mutual enrichment. We argue that both processes of knowledge transfer “from biology into engineering” and “from engineering to biology” can be done via TRIZ ‐ Theory of Inventive Problem Solving. © 2013, Published by Elsevier Selection and peer-review under responsibility of ETRIA.