Companies Propagating as Plants

Some plants propagate by extending their roots laterally then shooting up stems. The plant actually grows using such method and the growing number of stems are actually interconnected at the ground level through an extensive system of interconnected roots. At first, the budding shoot is dependent on the parent plant for nutrition and support. As the shoot grows, it can becomes less dependent on the parent plant and can survive on its own even if the connection to its parent plant was severed through the roots.

Similarly, in the business world, a company may grow by setting off new ventures in different sectors. The new spin-offs may be dependent at first on the parent company but then grow less dependent with time. They might ultimately reach a point where they are completely independent of the parent company and can survive on their own.

Business Seed Banks

Plant Seed Banks

Some seeds sprout as soon as they fall from their mother plant. Other seeds might stay dormant and and sprout only on the following year. Still other seeds may keep dormant for many years till they 'decide' to sprout. Such seeds form seed banks inside the soil.

Business Seed Banks

Similarly, in the business world some ideas start sprouting as soon as they come to mind. The person who gets the idea can start right away working on it. Other business ideas may stay dormant in the mind for many years till the right time for them to 'sprout' comes. It is totally OK and natural that you keep some ideas brewing in your mind for some period of time that might reach even years before deciding to let it out and actually act upon it. Make sure, however, that you do not keep all your ideas heavily guarded in a seed bank forever without allowing any of them to see the light!

Let the Seeds Die

It is quite natural that not all seeds would germinate and grow and become adults plants that reach the stage of bearing fruit and providing offspring. In conventional agriculture, we try to save every seed we sow, yet this is not how nature works. It would be interesting to aim at practicing natural agriculture where seeds can be sown while we are totally OK with the idea that many of them will be dying with time, either consumed by a bird, rotted by microorganisms or 'lost' in any other way to nature. Such seeds are not actually lost, but they cycle again into the system, it's just that their 'energy' returns back to us in a different form.

Reproductive Rates, Interesting and Useful

It is interesting how fecundity schedules can provide us with clues into how a species would increase in number by studying its reproductive and survival rates. One common application for fecundity is to calculate the fertility of humans in a given population. Other interesting applications are in the world of plants, animals and other organisms. It would be interesting and useful to use such knowledge in natural agriculture. This could help us spread plants using natural methods.

How Long Does a Plant Live?

There are plants that live for one year only, or less, then die. Those are the annual plants. Tomatoes is one example of annual plants. There are plants that live for several years, those are called perennial plants. Trees are examples of perennial plants, for example fruit trees like apple and mango trees. There also exists a type of plants that grow for two years then die. They develop on two stages, during the first year they start growing then on the second year they give flowers and fruit. Plants belonging to this category are called biennial plants. Examples of biennial plants are onion and carrot.

Software that Predicts Plant Growth?

It would be nice to come up with predictive systems that can provides estimates of the number of modules (leaves, branches, flowers and so on) of a plant that would be growing provided a set of conditions such as resources of water, nutrients and conditions of solar radiation and temperature. Such models may be statistical. One can use machine learning such as neural networks or artificial intelligence to build such models. That would be an interesting project to pursue. Probably there are already such systems existing, it would be still interesting to pursue this more and expand on them.

Grow your Business Like a Plant

Humans

There are organisms that grow in size but do not change in their form or structure. For instance, humans are born with a specific number of fingers, hands and legs. This form remains the same as a human develops. The size of the parts can grown but the form stays the same.

Plants

There exists other types of organisms that change in form as they grow. Plants first form a seedling which grown roots then leaves. A stem develops then later flowers, which fall, then after that comes the fruits which are also separated from the plant. The number of leaves in a plant keeps increasing as it grows. Unlike in humans, where the number of fingers stays the same but just can increase in size.

Businesses

These two different modes of growth in unitary (like humans) and modular (like plants) organisms can inspire us to think about how a business can also grow. A business may grow by keeping its form yet growing the size of each of its existing parts. A store, for instance, may expand by renting more space and becoming physically bigger. Businesses may also expand by adding more 'modules' to themselves. A retail business may expand by adding new branches in the same way a tree expands by adding more branches and leaves. A company may grown by diversifying its offerings and adding more products that it produces or sells.

It is quite interesting to see how the world of plants and animals can inspire ways of looking at businesses.

Types of Thieves

Intangible Plant Needs

What if plants do not only need the card measured resources such as nutrients, minerals, CO2, O2, sunlight and water? What if plans also need love, care, companionship, compassion and other intangible conditions? How about sound waves, what if plants need those too? What if plants are affected by the singing of the birds in a positive way? It would be quite interesting not only to study such conditions and their effect on plants, but also to use such knowledge that we come up with in order to devise systems by which we can care for plants. For instance, if in agriculture we know that a specific kind of crop or fruit tree needs such an amount of nitrogen, how about also knowing that it needs such specific sound waves in order to bear good fruit? That would be a completely new dimension in agriculture. I hope that when such time comes, sound requirements of a plant would be provided to it through natural means such as the singing of birds rather than using electronic devices that emit specific frequencies of sound waves in a farm.

Types of Thieves

Some organisms may be specialized in feeding on a particular type of plant, such as the silkworm and the mulberry tree leaves. Other organisms may feed on a variety of plants and animals. Similarly, thieves may specialize and 'prey' on particular types of robbery. Some thieves would be pickpockets that specialize on picking pockets. Others might be burglars who break into houses and rob their contents. Still other types of thieves might be those who steal bags from pedestrians. Yet other even more dangerous types may threaten to use force in order to take your belongings right before your very eyes. There are of course thieves who are 'generalists', they do not specialize in a particular type of robbery yet 'feed' on a variety of different types.

Supplying all Essential Resources

Sometimes in order for a plant to make use of a particular resource, such as a nutrient, it cannot do so except in the availability of another resource, such as another nutrient. So no matter how abundant the first resource is, the lack of availability or scarcity of the second resource would limit the growth of the plant.

Similarly, for humans, it is best to seek which required resources are scarce and try to make them available rather than increase the resources which are already present in abundance.

Organism Defenses Inspire Armies

Organism Defenses Inspire Armies

The various defense systems present in plants, animals and other organisms can be taken as a model to inspire defense systems for armies. It is interesting to know that even plants have their own chemical 'weapons' something which can inspire chemical warfare. While chemicals released by plants can protect them from predators while leaving the plant itself unharmed, chemical weapons devised by humans must be used with care in order not to harm those who are releasing them.

Decay Sucking Up Nitrogen

Microorganisms consume a lot of nitrogen and little oxygen when decomposing plant remnants. That is why when a piece of wood decays inside a soil, the nitrogen content around it is dramatically reduced. This can cause plants growing nearby to wilt or die due to the reduced nitrogen content in the soil that has been transferred to the microorganisms that are decaying the wood. It is thus advisable not to include a lot of brown (wood) decaying material next to new plants in order not to deprive them from the nitrogen content present in the soil.

Business Food Chain

Business Food Chain

The food chain and types of relationships among various organisms in various levels of the food chain can be taken as a model for how businesses work in an economy. Some businesses prey on others, some compete with one another, some fall pray to others, some are like parasites that keep draining others and still some have mutually beneficial relationships with one another.

It is worthwhile to deeply exploring the ecological ecosystem and mirroring this on the business world to gain insights and inspiration.

Attracting Birds

In order to attract specific kinds of birds it would be advisable to research what kind of habitat such birds thrive in and try to make such habitat available for them. Growing specific types of trees is one good method to attract birds of specific desired types. In a dream house it would be nice to have various types of trees singing and flying around.

Food Vs. Oxygen in an Aquarium

Food Vs. Oxygen in an Aquarium

We are often advised not to put too much food for gold fish or any kind of small fishes we keep at an aquarium at home. The reason behind this, ecology says, is that when such nutrients decay they can consume a lot of the oxygen dissolved in the water that depriving the fish from such oxygen and consequently killing the fish in the aquarium. We thus should provide only enough food for the fish to eat at once.

Creating Compost

The sciences of ecology and biology can provide us with lots of knowledge and inspiration into creating excellent compost by understanding microorganisms and their interactions as well as the flow of nutrients.

Business Modeled on Plant Roots Behavior

Mountain Minerals and Plant Varieties

Plants need nutrients. It would be interesting to explore the idea that in places where there are mountains containing specific minerals, specific types of plants would grow that consume and need such type of minerals. Such plants do not have to live on the mountains themselves, but may live near them or live in a place where such minerals are being transported through rivers. The type of minerals found in mountains and in locations around the world might thus be indicative of what kinds of plants grow there in grow near the stream of water that transports such minerals which would be nutrients for such plants.

Minerals for Humans

It is interesting to consider the minerals that humans need. Which minerals does the body consume and need, what function or group of functions does each of those minerals play and which minerals are not needed by the body or even harmful to it?

When animals eat plants, the get access to minerals in such plants. Humans for instance can get the iron mineral by eating plants that are grown in iron rich soils.

Roots Adapt to Soil

Roots of plants develop in different ways according to the type of soil they are in. It is therefore not a good idea to move a plant by unrooting and removing all the soil around its roots and putting it in a different kind of soil. This would harm the plant and create a shock. If this is absolutely necessary, then it is a good idea to prune the roots when transplanting in order to encourage new growth of new roots that are adapted to the new type of soil.

Business Modeled on Plant Roots Behavior

The way roots expand can be taken as a model for creating new business. Roots are the 'mouth' of the plant. They are the part that a plant uses to obtain the resources of nutrients and water. Roots first 'explore' the soil around them by shooting a taproot then they start exploiting the resources once they have discovered where they are and 'how' to obtain them. Similarly, it would be a good strategy for a business that wants to obtain resources (usually money) to first go through a phase of exploration (market research) to see where the resources are and how they can be exploited then start stretching its services to exploit such resources.

Discovering Companion Plants

Studying ecology and plant biology can help us in determining which plants can work well as companion plants instead of just relying on trial and error. By checking to see the nutrient requirements of various plants, this could provide us with clues on which plants can best be grown next to one another benefiting each other and not competing with one another.

Predicting Water Requirements of Plants

Predicting Water Requirements of Plants

It is possible to predict the rate of transpiration of plants in a specific area based on temperature, wind speed, solar radiation and other factors. There are complex models to predict that. It is interesting to use such models when planning for agriculture. This could help us determine the water requirements of plants.

Humid Plantations

One phenomenon I've noticed while sleeping over near or next to plantations in agricultural land in Egypt is the high rate of humidity at night. The weather feels very cold and the humidity is so high. One feels really sticky. It does not feel good at all. Now I understand that this is due to the high rate of transpiration of plants which loose a lot of water that holds still in the air and is not evaporated at night. It would be great to think of solutions for this phenomenon in order to make the atmosphere around such plantations more comfortable for humans to live in.

Soil Microorganisms

Soil Microorganisms

In permaculture, microorganisms in the soil have a crucial role to play in maintaining the health and well being of plants that are grown in that soil. Plants feed on nutrients that are provided by such microorganisms. By providing chemical fertilizers, tilling the soil a large proportion of such useful microorganisms are lost thus leading to the degradation of 'life' in the soil and thus plants suffer on the long term or become addicted to and dependent on the chemical fertilizers. Permaculture seeks to break such dependence and free plants and their carers making agriculture more sustainable.

Soil, Water and Plants

It is interesting how the size of particles in the soil, for instance sand having large particles, can affect the water holding capacity of such soil and the ability of plant roots to move and absorb water from it. Such things can be measured in order to determine the optimal conditions for a plant to grow and develop. It is interesting how such measurements can aid in planning for agriculture.

Reusing Transpired Water

Plants transpire a lot of water, much more than the amount they actually use to build their 'body' parts. This phenomenon can be made use of in order to reuse water in the best way possible. For instance, plants that use water then transpire most of it can have other plants next to them that would use such water which in turn would have other plants around them that would use the water those plants transpire and so on. Even if there would be some loss of water at the end, it would not be as much as in the case where a plant transpires water and such water is never reused by other plants.

Indoor Plants

The C3, C4 and CAM pathways of how plants consume CO2 can provide us with a guide on which plants to use indoors particularly in bedrooms so that they do not exhale CO2 into the room thus posing a threat to people sleeping at night.

Rich and Poor People

Leaves of sun plants use a number of tactics to reduce the amount of light they absorb from strong sun rays while leaves of shade plants use opposite tactics to increase the amount of sun radiation they absorb. So if leaves of a sun plan receives 7 times more radiation than leaves of a shade plant, they would absorb only 4 times more radiation than those of the shade plant. This is an interesting phenomenon. People who are rich may waste a lot of their food or wealth while those who are poor can be much more efficient and make much better use of the resources available for them.

Plants and Wind

Plants and Wind

For plants it is not only freshwater availability, soils richness, sun and air but also physical forces such as wind that play a role in the existence and survival of plants. For instance a plant that faces strong winds might have its branches break or it might be blown away altogether.

Wind can also blow away humidity and thus rapidly making the water evaporate thus depriving the plant from enough water in case of arid lands. It is thus essential to grow wind breaks in the form of strong high trees that protect the rest of the crops grown in a farm from strong winds.

It is interesting to note that as plants adapt and acclimatize to conditions such as availability or shortage of water, soil nutrients and soil physical properties and the amount of light available they also adapt to other physical conditions such as the speed, strength and direction of wind. Too much wind can harm the plant, yet some wind can keep the branches dancing and happy helping it grow some resistance.

Seaweeds

It is interesting to note the seaweed anchored to the rocks on the shores of Alexandria. It would be interesting to study them more and study their ecosystem.

Do

Take photos of seaweeds on rocks on the shores of Alexandria.