Matthew A. Rhoades Built an Awesome Career, Accidentally

Matthew A. Rhoades wasn’t the best student. In hindsight, it’s good that he focused on getting his go kart up to 70 MPH instead of his homework.

Having received more than 40 patents, from a heralded Trek mountain bike frame to Sony flat panel displays, it’s clearly worked out for him. That didn’t come, however, without first getting comfortable with his own methodology—inductive versus deductive reasoning—and convincing a parade of bosses who did things the opposite way.

Blowing old ideas up, splintering a big problem into a million tiny ones, and reveling in your mistakes.

Now Matthew leads the design of Nike’s baseball equipment, and tackles the big, scary questions as the founder of MatteLab, where they experiment with disruptive designs for objects as well established as scissors and swim goggles.

His career, story and magnetism are a testament to the effectiveness of blowing old ideas up, splintering a big problem into a million tiny ones, and reveling in your mistakes.

You can check out Matt’s entire presentation below, flip through the photos on Facebook, or scope out the next installment of RUNT on our Events page.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.