Profile

A very positive, outgoing and proactive senior manager with a highly successful track record delivering sustainable, breakthrough product for New Zealand.  Jonathan is privileged to have worked for some of the leading design companies in NZ, developing world leading product.  He is a very strong team player, with excellent communication skills on multiple levels and works hard to ensure staff are empowered to do their jobs to the best of their ability. Jonathan is passionate about NZ innovation and has a strong focus on business development, process & sustainable design.

Education

University of Canterbury - Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering (Hons.)

Christchurch Polytechnic - NZ Certificate of Engineering (Mech.)

Christchurch Polytechnic - Trade Cert Fitting, Turning & Machining

Brad Sugar’s - Entrepreneurs training

Dale Carnegie - Professional development

Dale Carnegie - Leadership

Strengths

  • Strategically focused with excellent commercial sense
  • Very strong Engineering background
  • Passionate about Design
  • Very good communicator
  • Strong Process & Quality focus
  • Understands and nurtures employee value
  • International development experience

Work History

Right Connect CEO

Right Connect is a distribution company with the exclusive rights for Asia Pacific to distribute Right Hemisphere’s extremely innovative suite of products to the SME market.    The Company was started in Oct 2009 and the business model is to access our target market through the VAR (Value Added Reseller) CAD channel in each region.   This has proved to be a very successful formula already with the signing of seven resellers signed inside three months of start up throughout India, Australia & NZ with many more enquiries in the pipeline.  As with any start up, the role covered all aspects of the company.  

Business Development Manager

A business development and sales role within the South Island.  This was a placeholder role that turned into a very rewarding experience. 

Director

The Ideas Foundry is a small design consultancy that was set up to take sustainable products ideas to market.  A number of ideas have been developed and presented to international markets.  To date, one product has been commercialised and was the recipient of two Best design awards for innovation and sustainability.  This product is due to be released in May 2010.

Business Manager + Mech. Engineering Manager

Part of the Senior Management team and responsible for developing business relationships, managing existing accounts and Sales strategies.  This included the role of Mech. Engineering Manager for the first 6 months, running a team of 11 Mechanical engineers including Testing and Validation.  Clients included: Mountain Buggy, Humanware, Formway, Five Mile, Vector, Navman.

Bus. Development + Environmental Team Leader (interim)

A Strategic Business Development role that included leveraging Formway’s IP and the establishment of Formway’s Environmental Sustainability program.

The Business development role primarily looked at leveraging Formway’s existing IP into different industry verticals.  Potential markets and partner companies were identified and approached with a view to licensing Formway’s IP and utilising Formway’s product development and marketing expertise.

The Environmental team leader role established Formway’s Environmental Sustainability program.  This included documenting what the program would entail (resources and timeline and expenditure), and initiating the process.  This role produced enormous exposure and revenue for Formway in relation to a customer shift towards environmentally based purchasing decisions

LIFE Team Leader

Project Leader for the LIFE chair project managing the final design and productionisation of the project.  This included managing the internal team of up to 14 staff and managing the relationship and interaction with the R&D team of their international partner company, Knoll.

Snr. Design Engineer

Snr Design Engineer for the LIFE chair.  This also included the role of CAD management for Formway Design.

R&D Manager-Lawnmower Division

Responsible for the design and development of the Lawnmaster mower range.  Managed a team of 3.  Awful environment - enough said!

Design support Engineer

Design authority for the T3000 handheld product range.  This was a $50M/ annum production line and Tait’s flagship handheld.  Completed a BE Mech. Hons. during this period.

Production Engineer

First role out of school.  Floated between production workshop - establishing/ improving production lines, and the maintenance workshop - looking after plant and equipment.   Completed NZCE Mech. and Trade Cert FT&M during this time

J Prince Strengths & Value

Very strong Engineering background

  • Design engineer with a Manufacturing background
  • From production through to design of technology products
  • Well rounded skill set & qualifications
  • Significant experience throughout the complete value chain: Manufacturing/ Production & Process engineering/ Design/ Suppliers/ Sales support/ Marketing/ Packaging/ Customer

Strategically focused

  • Focussed on long term company goals
  • Personal long term goal to run a world leading, environmentally focussed, product development company
  • Strong drive to introduce meaningful products to the world
  • Business development focus
  • Strong sales & strategy skills
  • Ability to help an organisation leverage design
  • Experienced in accessing foreign markets

Very good communicator

  • Ability to communicate on a number of levels
  • Strives to view all perspectives to make a value judgement
  • Understands the benefit of cross-functional teams and interaction
  • Proven ability to present to peers, conferences, lectures
  • Very strong network of engineers/ designers/ suppliers etc, throughout NZ and Internationally

Passionate about Design

  • User centred design focus - understanding the customer
  • Ability to review designs from the customers perspective
  • Experienced in uncovering the underlying ‘latent’ needs
  • Understands the benefit of design and the value it adds to an organisation in strategic positioning and revenue streams

Strong Win-Win Values

  • Believe in Principle Centred Leadership values
  • Abundance Mentality
  • More than enough to go around
  • Create true Win-Win relationships

International design focus

  • Understands the strength of NZ design
  • Strong working knowledge of how to interact with/ sell to international companies
  • Experienced in competing on a world stage

Fosters employee value

  • Understands the Importance of providing a collaborative, empowered environment that nurtures growth and ownership
  • Particular experience with knowledge workers
  • Values an open, honest and understanding environment
  • Strives to develop an atmosphere where creativity is nurtured
  • Belief that ‘Buy-In’ is essential to a decision making process

Passionate about Quality and good Processes

  • Belief that with good clear processes/ requirements people can really excel.
  • Know-how to construct robust, well researched & documented brief
  • Very experienced in set up/ implementation of quality systems