活かす【いかす】

活かす means "to make good use of": you take something you have – a skill, experience, a material's own qualities – and put it to work instead of letting it go to waste. The thing used takes を, and where you put it to use takes に.

It is an ordinary う-verb: 活かして, 活かした, and the potential 活かせる.

Bringing out what is already there

With ingredients, materials, a piece of land or a space, 活かす means letting its own qualities show instead of covering them up. 活かした before a noun is the usual shape.

活かす or 生かす

Both are read いかす. いかす生かす is the standard spelling, used in newspapers and official writing for every sense of the word, including "keep alive". 活かす is a common alternative spelling used only for "make use of". In that sense either is correct.

活きる, the intransitive partner

活かす is transitive: someone makes use of something. Its partner いきる活きる (also written いきる生きる) makes the thing itself the subject, with が: the experience pays off, the skill comes into its own.

• × 経験が活かしている → 経験が活きている