OVERVIEW
Co-founder and partner at THRIVE, Trent Kahute has a long history in product and service design and an entrepreneurial spirit. He’s expert at helping organizations create actionable insights from large sets of behavioral data to fully understand the user experience. For more than 12 years, Trent has dedicated himself to innovating in the design industry, and he challenges his team to think unconventionally every day. He’s hands-on with clients, and works hard to help them transform customer insights into high-value product and service experiences. Among other things, Trent’s specialty is aligning innovation and business strategies to balance short-term business needs with long-term strategic objectives.
EXPERIENCE
Even before THRIVE, innovation was at the heart of Trent’s personal mission. As an innovation consultant within the Strategic Futures Group at Philips, and as a designer/researcher at Radius, Altitude and Eleven in the Boston area, Trent led customer insight, innovation strategy and design implementation efforts for some of the world’s best-known brands. These include: Procter & Gamble, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Philips Healthcare, Medtronic and more. Trent has a Master’s degree in Design Planning from the Institute of Design, IIT and a Bachelors of Industrial Design from Syracuse University.
EXTRAS
Trent publishes and speaks regularly about design research and how to introduce empathy into organizational culture. His product and design work has earned many design awards and patents, and he’s frequently invited to lecture about them.