Jonathan Butters
• BSc Hons Mechanical Engineering (University of Newcastle Upon Tyne)
• MDes Industrial Design Engineering (Royal College of Art)
• Diploma in Industrial Design Engineering (Imperial College)
• Regional Director of British Design Innovation
Personal Statement
“I sit comfortably between the diverse worlds of Creativity, Academia, R&D, science, engineering, aesthetics, human factors and commerce. I assimilate issues and requirements, and respond appropriately to deliver creative, innovative and technically effective solutions across a broad range of sectors. My skills and know-how can be applied to many situations and, indeed, has been, throughout my working life as a scientist, engineer, artist, musician, writer, innovator, inventor, designer, teacher, researcher and business consultant. I have particular experience in bringing creative solutions to the fields of medical/healthcare products, laboratory equipment and machines, industrial and scientific equipment, consumer products and packaging, and domestic and leisure products. In short, I help turn ideas into commercially successful solutions – usually but creating strong teams and establishing good processes! By demonstrating insight and empathy and by bringing people together, I rapidly gain a community’s confidence and help to build a value-driven proposition through teamwork. Working at the highest level I bring innovation into the heart of an organisation’s behaviour.”
Career Stages – in chronological order
1978
• Knitwear designer and tapestry outworker
• Apprentice Mechanical Engineer – General engineering
• Professional Engineer – Iron and steel processing
• Technical Manager/Product Designer – Architectural products
• Lecturer – Art and Design Foundation/3D Design
• Lecturer – BTEC Sound recording for radio production
• Professional Musician – Signed to Arista Records as ”The 25th of May”. 80 in UK Chart, BBC Radio One Simon Mayo record of the week, BBC Radio One John Peel session, BBC Radio One Mark Goodier session, featured on Granada “Celebration” arts broadcast
• Sculptor – Exhibited at International arts festival, Wigan and Bluecoat, Liverpool
• Soundtrack writing and production - video and radio
• Designer Maker – collaborations and exhibited nationally and on BBC
• Product and Furniture Designer – individual private commissions
• Senior Lecturer and Programme Author/Manager – Industrial and Product Design
• Design Consultant – Client commissions – product, furniture, architecture, graphics, branding, animation and multimedia
• Artist facilitator – Exhibition management and art production support
• Entrepreneur – Company start-ups to exploit creativity and intellectual property
• Innovation Consultant – High end strategic consultancy, facilitation and implementation
2009
Professional Background
Over the past 11 years Jonathan has created and managed two leading innovation and design consultancies (Jab Design and Butters Innovation), operating nationally and internationally with market leading clients such as RNLI, NTL, Unipath, Farfield Group, Sunrise Medical, Promethean, The Christie Hospital, MIMIT, Salford Royal NHS Trust and Crystal Clear International. His companies have won prestigious awards and accolades including Design Week, D&AD and WIPO. Jonathan is also engaged as a high level innovation consultant and is currently helping Manchester Knowledge Capital to develop a commercially attractive proposal for the piloting of an integrated digital ticketing project across the city-region. Partners in this project include Manchester City FC, Manchester United FC, GMPTE, Arts About Manchester, Network Rail, Transpennine Express, Manchester Travelcards, Manchester Airport Group, Marketing Manchester, Intelligent Transport Systems KTN, Manchester City Council, Sale Sharks, BT and NWDA.
Jonathan founded Jab Design in 2002, following 3 years as an independent product design and innovation consultant, and it quickly grew to be in the top 5% of UK design consultancies (source: BDI and DBA surveys). Offering the full range of innovative product design and technology development services, Jab Design worked with over 70 clients across the UK, ranging from small start-up SME businesses and individual inventors/entrepreneurs, through to large “Blue Chip” companies. Following the closure of Jab Design in 2008, Jonathan set up Butters Innovation to focus upon the strategic development of disruptive innovation – particularly in the HEI spin-out high-technology sector.
Jonathan is a prolific networker and attends many events in the medical, science, cultural, innovation, design, arts and enterprise sectors. He also maintains ongoing relationships with University Technology Transfer Officers, business gateways, incubators and IP offices. This has lead to extensive links with several UK universities, including a Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Liverpool and Strathclyde Universities. Jonathan is regularly called upon as an external panel member for programme validation at the leading NW universities.
Prior to establishing Butters Innovation and Jab Design, Jonathan lectured in 3D and Product Design at a number of HE and FE establishments including Liverpool John Moores University, Salford University, University of Liverpool, Wigan College of Technology, UCLAN and Manchester Metropolitan University. At JMU he also designed, set up and led new undergraduate courses in Product Design and raised European funding for a number of Masters programmes. As well as teaching, he instigated industrial partnerships and authored a number of academic papers.
Jonathan originally trained as a Mechanical Engineer and gained over 10 years of industrial experience at Davy McKee’s R&D and engineering HQ in the North East of England, before he moved into Industrial and Product Design via a postgraduate course at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College.
Jonathan’s career has given rise to direct experience of over 250 creative projects across the following sectors and sub-sectors with budgets ranging from £2k to £750k:
Visual Arts
• Exhibited 3D designs (London Contemporary Design Fairs and Liverpool Unknowns)
• Trojan TV exhibition (Wigan International Arts Festival as the artist. Video and sculpture)
• Strange Fruit (Bluecoat, Liverpool as the artist. Installation)
• 1st Liverpool Biennial Fringe (Tracey, managed the creation of several gallery spaces and supported artists in showing their work)
• Merseyside Dance Initiative (supported the artist Nina Edge in creating large outdoor installation along Leeds Liverpool Canal)
• Salford Sculpture Trail (engineered and built large sculpture for the artist Nina Edge)
• Belonging & Beyond (engineered and built installation. A collaborative project between artists Lin Holland, Liverpool and Veronika Moos-Brochhagen, Cologne)
Advanced Manufacturing and Engineering
• Consumer goods (paper cutter, wearable cosmetics, door chimes, eye lift device)
• Domestic products (garden trolley, golf transporter, inflatable fire escape, fire surrounds)
• Industrial products (Man Over Board alarm system, automatic testing equipment, handheld glass testing unit, wire based safety system)
• Fabricated metal products (street furniture, gates, shelters, covered walkways)
• Machinery and equipment (thermal transfer press, unmanned aerial vehicle)
• Product packaging (sweets packaging)
• Energy storage (pneumatic uninterruptible power supply)
• Automotive instrumentation (on-line engine/systems test equipment)
Life Sciences
• Medical devices (hand held blood monitor, surgical tools and consumables)
• Medical equipment (medical disc dispenser, biopsy cassettes, blood fractioning robot)
• Healthcare products (physiotherapy equipment, podiatrists chair, rehabilitation products)
• Laboratory equipment (automated cytogenetic harvester, densitometer)
Environmental Technologies
• Water quality (in situ mains water monitoring device)• Energy efficiency (combined heat and power unit, innovative fuel cell)
Knowledge and Expertise
Jonathan’s main areas of knowledge and expertise are in:
• Strategic innovation and design (Disruptive, Open and Collaborative Innovation)
• Proposal writing and delivery – including the production of funding applications
• Teaching and dissemination through experiential learning
• Crossing boundaries and working with disparate communities
• Project management - making things happen on time, to budget, to specification and matching expectations
• Arts facilitation
• Team building, leading and management - inclusive design processes engaging with the wider community of interest, assigning appropriate roles and capacity building
• Idea development and innovation - converting concepts into commercial success
• Rapid prototyping and rapid production
• Outsourcing
• Sourcing and quality managing international supply chains
• 3D Design, Industrial and Product Design, fusing engineering, technical and process knowledge and practice within a creative design process to add value, be more commercially effective and bring tangible benefits to all concerned
• Compliance and regulation
• Sustainable design
• Drumming, sound design and sound recording
Methodology Development
Innovation Due Diligence - providing an initial assessment of IPR through early stage design intervention. This process is tailored to pre-starts and new-start enterprises as well as manufacturers planning for a “paradigm shift”. It extends early stage analysis and intervention to ensure that the IPR (technology or non-technology IPR) that underpins the enterprise is sound and well considered. The outputs included a commercial/feasibility/technical/regulatory “traffic light” report, initial costed prototyping, business and manufacturing strategy as well as some early stage design concepts in 3D CAD if required.
Proposition Pitch/Innovation Filter – Project with BDI to standardise review of new “Propositions”. This shows the feasibility of proposition with the potential investment return, risks and key actions
Innovation Cells – Facilitated team-based innovation workshops in partnership with Salford University, to develop innovative processes within academia leading to commercial outcomes
Seminars delivered recently
Cell Sprint case study – Presentation in a seminar at the I-Tech Partner event at the Daresbury Innovation Centre in 2007
Collaborative Innovation - Presentation in a seminar on “Collaborative Innovation” at the Food and Drink Innovation Network event at the Heath, Runcorn in 2007
SME Innovation - Presentation to Bank of Scotland and Barclays Relationship Managers in 2007
China, SE Asia and Japan Medical Device Innovation - Presentation to UKTI and Hong Kong Trade and Development Council at Medical, Dusseldorf 2007
Open Innovation Challenge - Presentation to NWDA, Bionow, Medilink, Enterprise Ventures and others in 2007
Making Intellectual Property Work - Presentation in a seminar at the Innovation Network event at Liverpool University in 2007
Industry Engagement seminar – UCLAN and Daresbury Innovation Centre 2008
Commercial 3D CAD strategies – NT CADCAM and UCLAN 2008
Recycled Product Design – Envirolink/Salford Innovation Forum March 2009
Other Activites
Regional Development - NWDA Contact
Recently been involved in refining the Proposition Pitch with Medilink NW following on from NWDA Bionow discussions and meetings.
Representative and founder member of the NW Product Design Group – in discussion to develop the capacity for product design and innovation in the NW region.
Currently a key member of MediLink NW’s first fully supported consortium. We have successfully won funding for a £300k medical device development project.
Business Link NW Contact
Jonathan has been an approved consultant on the national Business Link and Manchester Chamber Business Support Solutions register of consultants and has been a supplier on the Merseyside Objective One programmes from their inception.
National and other Regional Agencies
Jonathan is an approved supplier on the East Midlands and Oxford Business Link register and has also engaged with PERA and the London Manufacturing Advisory Service. Regular attendances at NESTA in London, The Design Council, DIUS, UKSport and TSB has made him well known to deliverers and facilitators of national programmes in the Innovation sector.
As a regional director of NW British Design Innovation, Jonathan is a voice of the top end, strategic design community.
Published Academic Works and Papers
Butters, J., Downie, (1994), The Post Industrial Convergence of Cultural Agendas in Design and Engineering Education, Conference Proceedings, 1st National Conference on Product Design Education, Bournemouth University.
Butters, J., (1998) Multimedia Course Materials and Product Design, Conference Proceedings, 3rd National Conference on Product Design Education, University of Central Lancashire.
Butters, J., (1998), The supporting innovation in schools project CD ROM. The challenge of producing and engaging and easily navigable interactive archive on CD-ROM, Proceedings, IEEE International Conference on Information Visualisation, London UK.
Butters, J., Corke, C., Downie, M., Fowler,P., Hopper, M.G. (eds) (1998), The supporting innovation in schools project: an interactive archive on CD ROM, JMU Education, Liverpool.
Employment History in detail
2009 to date: Project Manager for Manchester Knowledge Capital – Integrated Digital Ticketing project.
2008 to date: Director and Principle Innovation Consultant of Butters Innovation Ltd.
2008 to 2008: Director of Technological Systems Ltd. - resigned
2007 to date: Director of Cheeky Monkey Holdings Ltd.
2007 to 2008: Managing Director of Clever Machines Ltd.
2007 to date: NW Regional Director of British Design Innovation.
2002 to 2008: Managing and Design Director, Jab Design Consultancy Ltd.
2000 - 2004: Director of Klip Ltd. – resigned.
2000 - 2003: Director of Innovation Design Technology Ltd. – resigned.
1988 – 2002: Principal Consultant and Designer for Jab Design.
1994 – 1999: Senior Lecturer and Programme Manager in Product Design for
Liverpool John Moores University.
1991 – 1993: Part time Lecturer in 3D Design for Liverpool Polytechnic Foundation Course.
1992 – 1993: Part time Lecturer in Sound Recording for Wigan and Leigh College of Technology.
1992 – 1993: Part time Lecturer in Industrial Design for Salford College of Technology.
1989 – 1991: Drummer and Recording Artist for Arista Records.
1989 – 1993: Part time Lecturer in 3D Design for Wigan and Leigh College of Technology.
1988 – 1989: Technical Manager/Product Designer for Nouveaux Security Products, Liverpool.
1979 – 1986: Assistant Engineer for Davy McKee, Stockton on Tees, Cleveland.
1978 – 1979: Technician Apprentice with Head Wrightson, Thornaby, Cleveland.