NYC company encourages local inventors

(New York -WABC, April 24, 2006) (WABC) -- When people talked about innovation in the 90s they meant technology. Today with products like the iPod, innovation means design, and with the launch of ABC's newest reality show, the American Inventor, would-be inventors are vying for the chance to become the next great inventor.

Eyewitness News' Heidi Jones hit the streets of New York City to talk to the professionals about design and invention.

At the Office of Design and Architecture or TODA in Tribeca, young industrial designers are creating the next new product for the American market.

TODA is a design studio that combines graphic, product, and industrial design to create and recreate products like this modern teapot.

Mark Naden and Marcos Chavez began TODA together seven years ago in the same spirit of inventors around the world, a dream that has blossomed into modern designs like flower vases, to fruit bowls, which have won international awards and clients like Sephora and Yale University.

However, as Davin Stowell, the founder of Smart Design, one of the largest design consultants in New York City will attest to, you don't have to work for a design company to be an inventor.

With over two decades of experience, Smart Design has cultivated clients like Timex, Kellog's and HBO. They employee designers, engineers and researchers with the goal of making life easier via inventions, like a space-saving flower pot, an easy to read measuring cup and a potato masher that mashes and scrapes the sides of a pan.

Debera Johnson oversees the PRATT Design Incubator in Brooklyn, a program whose goal is to help graduates of the design school launch socially responsible businesses. They do that by providing a room with computers and funding from the state.

It helps people like Sam and Teresita Cochran, a brother/sister duo, who are designing an alternative electricity source via solar and wind energy.

Former PRATT graduate Stuart Constantine also got his start with the help of the PRATT Institute. His thesis in 1995 turned into a real-life business called Core 77, a successful online forum for industrial designers that is 11-year-old.

So, if necessity is the mother of invention and small opportunities lead to great enterprise then just maybe one of the contestants on ABC's the American Inventor will have a story to tell one day as well.

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