Keith Marble (kmarble)

There is a part of every person that just never grows up!  My childlike curiosity for how things work and evolve continues to flourish and pull me in new directions.  

I grew up in Calgary, Alberta in the shadow of the Canadian Rockies. During many camping and hiking trips into the foothills and along mountain streams there was no shortage of natural wonders to ponder and explore.
This curiosity led to a career in mechanical engineering. I have charted an unusually nomadic path through product design and manufacturing development, from consumer products to industrial, health care, automotive and medical device fields.

About ten years into my career, I became very frustrated with the random and chaotic product development process. Knowing there had to be a better way, I began to study tools and processes to streamline new product development. Initially this was a study of engineering practices (extremely dry stuff!) but it rapidly evolved into an intuitive study across an unbounded landscape. On the hunt for common themes and repeating patterns, I explored chaos theory, TRIZ and evolutionary biology. The subtle human dimensions of creativity were fascinating! Think about it, whether writing a song, designing a bridge or sculpting in clay we are all tapping the same basic creative skills.
Some key results of this ongoing study:

1. International conference presentation in Orlando, Florida to engineers on creativity entitled “Tap your Hidden Resources”. This described a simple visual model for creativity and how it can be developed as a skill.  

2. International conference presentation in Costa Mesa, California entitled “TRIZ, Theory and Application”. TRIZ is a Russian acronym for “theory of inventive problem solving”.

3. Two patents in ultrasonic welding technology, one utilized on several automobiles including the Saab 9/5 and BMW “7” series platforms.

4. In the medical device field, as manager of mechanical design engineering for WorldHeart Corp, I oversaw the final stages of development of a fully implantable artificial heart.

5. Again in the medical device field, as a manufacturing engineering consultant with Millenium Biologix Inc. I managed the design/manufacturing interface for development of a commercial lab device intended to replicate human cell tissue.

On a completely different dimension…

Is it Biomimicry?
According to Wikipedia, Biomimicry (from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate) is a relatively new science that studies nature, its models, systems, processes and elements and then imitates or takes creative inspiration from them to solve human problems.

What about the common human problem of raising kids. Beyond providing our children with the basics we want to help them to achieve their full potential. Yet from the standpoint of science we know more about achieving the full potential of a tomato plant than our own offspring.

I was confronted with this dilemma when I became a dad in 1983. On review of the current literature I dismissed 98% of it for fundamental reasons. It did not acknowledge my innate intelligence as a parent. Parenting was a cascading list of “how to’s” that most people blindly subscribed to. I questioned: Any animal in nature has instincts about how to raise their young yet we why do we rely totally on external advice? Secondly the advice didn’t feel right on an intuitive level. It didn’t help there were conflicting views on virtually every subject. The body of knowledge was completely adrift.

By strange coincidence (synchronicity perhaps), at precisely this time I began tending an apple orchard of five hundred trees. I knew even less about tending fruit trees than I did about parenting! I tended the orchard for the next three years as my family grew.

The experience in the orchard was forgotten until the year my youngest son entered high school.  I realized I had three exceptionally bright sons. They eventually graduated from high school with a combined average of 97.5% with no parental pressure what so ever. I had to ask what did I (we) as parents do differently than anyone else? Without a doubt, a significant contributing factor to this outcome was my experience tending the orchard….

Was it biomimicry? I think so. I look forward to exploring and debating this question with the community. In the mean time, think about synaptic pruning and check out IntuitiveParenting.ca (a work in progress)

I am very excited about joining this community. I think there is tremendous potential here for innovation, making great connections and collectively nudging the global mindset in the right direction. That time has come and we can all contribute in some way.

By the way, I am always on the hunt for the next cool project. Let me know how I can help.