As a career industrial designer and innovation practitioner, Ty Hagler has managed hundreds of new product development programs through the process of opportunity identification guided to commercialization. Once an intrapreneur within Home Depot, leveraging an Olympic Job Opportunities Program sponsorship to make the business case to senior executives to create new product development capabilities within the retailer – then on to lead the portfolio of internal new product programs. While at Home Depot, Ty was exposed to many leading product development firms like IDEO and HLB, which inspired the early business model for Trig. Development plans for Trig were further refined during his graduate studies at the NC State evening MBA program, which has been described by one client as a highly effective disruptive business model that competes at the same level as top-tier consulting firms.
Trig is an award-winning innovation consulting, product design, and marketing firm that offers comprehensive insight-to-commercialization services for start-ups, mid-sized, and Fortune 500 companies across the United States. Based in Chapel Hill, the 10-person Trig® team can be found in Charlotte, Raleigh, Knoxville, Los Angeles, and Richmond, Virginia.
Conventional wisdom of working with design firms says that we need to all be in the room together; Trig challenges that convention through our investment in digital collaboration tools and methodologies that drive a more efficient and effective process. As a fully digital company, we have built a global network of rapid prototype shops, machine shops, and contract manufacturing vendors to provide excellent quality solutions to handle the variety of client projects that frequent a new product development consulting firm.
