Teresita Cochran

What does SMIT stand for and how did you get started?

SMIT stands for Sustainably Minded Interactive Technology, which is precisely what my company makes. We consider ourselves a Sustainable Design group.

SMIT got started when I was in the Interactive Telecommunications Program getting my Masters in interactive technology at NYU from 2003-2005. I started SMIT in February 2004 as a sustainable technology interest group and list serve about green events and information. Simultaneously, a small group of classmates and I started doing SMIT projects exploring alternative power.

SMIT turned into my thesis when I realized that it could become a business. My original business model was to create SMIT with three main parts: product design, consulting and education. (I even came up with what I thought were very clever names for each sector: SmittenDesign, Greenward, and smitEd).

It became what it is today when I was finishing my thesis in May 2005 and needed help from my Pratt Industrial Design student brother, Samuel Cochran. We hadn't talked much about our thesis projects with each other at that point, but he helped me with mine on the condition that I help him with his. I had him weld a recumbent bike that I was altering to power my laptop for my thesis presentation. He had me cut out a visual prototype of solar ivy leaves, meant to represent a new kind of solar panel that would also produce wind power via piezoelectric 'stems' - a project he called 'GROW'. We instantly realized that we were doing work in the same area and vowed to talk more after our thesis presentations.

At his thesis show, Debera Johnson, the (now former) head of the Pratt Industrial Design Department and the Director of the Pratt Design Incubator, asked him to give her a business plan for GROW so that he could apply to get into the Incubator. I happened to be standing right next to him, we looked at each other and realized that SMIT was about to become a Sustainable Design business, with GROW as our first product offering. We gave Debera Johnson my SMIT thesis/business plan a week after and moved into the Incubator in September 2005 with a small angel investment from our family to make a working prototype of GROW as our first SMIT product.

What are some challenges you faced getting off the ground?

Like most start-up businesses, the biggest challenge has been funding. We were lucky enough to apply for and receive an E-Team grant from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) a year after we got into the Incubator and have been using the $14,700 grant to finish research and development on our first working prototype of GROW. We have had interns who have been willing to work without pay and have had many friends/volunteers work with us to get to where we are today.

In October of 2007 we were approached by the Museum of Modern Art to have GROW be featured in their show Design and the Elastic Mind, and realized that we would need to do another round of fundraising to be able to make the panel. The following month we brought on a new partner Benjamin Howes, an architectural designer, and incorporated as an LLC. Soon after, we did a small friends and family appeal for investment to bring in capital to build the GROW panel for the MoMA. Our shared contacts brought in about $30,000 from friends and family, and NCIIA also gave an additional $5000 as a sponsorship grant to be sure our panel could be made in time for the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit.

Besides funding, another challenge for me personally has been that I live in Boston, MA and commute to Brooklyn, NY every week to work at SMIT. I moved to Boston in July 2005 just before I got married and have been traveling back and forth, Mon-Wed in NYC and Thurs-Sun in Boston. This has been part challenge, part blessing, since I am able to network and market SMIT and GROW in two major cities instead of just one. Ideally, SMIT will have a Boston office in the not-too-distant future in addition to our Brooklyn office.

What are some current or upcoming projects?

SMIT has designed a beautiful clean energy product: GROW is our patent-pending hybrid solar and wind device. Using flexible solar cells as leaves, GROW takes the shape of ivy growing on a building; wind power is generated by the fluttering of these solar leaves. GROW is a modular, lightweight system that can attach to any building surface. We are exploring possibilities of using a leasing/take-back system for GROW so that we as the producers are ultimately responsible for its end-life and recycling. As mentioned earlier, a concept prototype of GROW is currently featured in the exhibit Design and the Elastic Mind at the Museum of Modern Art until May 12th, 2008.

An upcoming project, currently in development is called WATTg, an energy-monitoring software and visualization interface that will be integrated with all future GROW products. WATTg will likely lead to product offerings designed around the context of creating both software and hardware that lower one's ecological footprint.

Where would you like to see them this time next year?

We would love GROW to be available for sale at some design-focused stores like the MoMA store and Design Within Reach, and we envision ourselves having done some client-based installs as well on a more architectural scale by then. Also by next year we anticipate WATTg being fully functional and ready to be integrated into GROW and other energy/power production objects.

Are there any collaborators or partners you would like to work with?

We would love to work with some original equipment manufacturers, namely, Nanosolar or Konarka who are both bringing huge innovations to the thin film solar product market. Also, companies such as Face International or Smart Material who manufacture thin, flexible piezoelectric generators that we would like to integrate into each solar leaf. It would be great to work with a decorative cable company as well to make the understructure of GROW. In addition, we are currently talking with Shawn Frayne, founder of Humdinger, LLC and inventor of the WindBelt about collaborating on a version of GROW that incorporates his technologies.

For the software development side of WATTg it would be amazing to work with Sun Microsystems. Why not, right?

What does sustainability mean to you?

Sustainability means something that operates in a closed-loop. It means understanding things and in our case designing things to have a cyclical life; they don’t ever end up becoming waste.

What is your favorite material to work with and why?

This may not count as a “material” per se, but I love working with soil. I have a big compost bin in my backyard in Boston and a deck garden that I tend to every spring, summer and fall. Turning waste into soil, and then getting my hands into that soil so I can grow food reminds me and reiterates why I enjoy and am inspired by doing work with SMIT.

To find out more about SMIT and GROW, visit www.s-m-i-t.com. Teresita can be reached at sita [at] s-m-i-t.com