Biology recovers promising solutions for all kinds of technical challenges. Finding exceptional solutions is crucial for innovative designs. This paper presents an approach to support the designer in searching for extraordinary biological solutions for a technical problem and the biologist in finding an application for an interesting phenomenon. The search is based on matching terms in technical and biological documents in four term categories: system functions, descriptions of the system itself, its characteristics and its environmental interactions. The approach is illustrated by an example.     «

Biology recovers promising solutions for all kinds of technical challenges. Finding exceptional solutions is crucial for innovative designs. This paper presents an approach to support the designer in searching for extraordinary biological solutions for a technical problem and the biologist in finding an application for an interesting phenomenon. The search is based on matching terms in technical and biological documents in four term categories: system functions, descriptions of the system itself...     »