About The Innovation Garage®

The Innovation Garage® is a strategy, leadership, innovation and supply chain growth firm delivering

expert consulting, education, tools, and technology in change management helping organizations to build capability to grow.

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Organizations
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Trained
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Projects
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US & Global Patents
$0M+
in Savings
$0M+
Net Margin Revenue

At The Innovation Garage®, we build capability for:

Strategy

We build strategy. Starting with Why, then working backwards to How.

Leadership

We guide leaders from startup, non-profit, privately held and the globally publicly traded to intentionally self-disrupt their offerings and organizations for growth.

Innovation

We build the capability of your organization to harness creative thinking that adds value and develop a culture focused on growth.

Supply Chain

We build your organization’s capability to execute, improve operationally AND amplify its supply chain.

Impacts & Client Outcomes – Results We Deliver

Alignment

We design custom growth experiences in change management for products, processes, services and supply chains to align your organization and build its capability to grow.

Effective Teams

We build up and coach the leadership capability of both new and current leaders and their teams. Delivering a clear vision, purpose and end state to work the long-term growth plan.

Profitability

We build capability to become more operationally efficient and profitable, expanding your organization’s scale and reach to deliver value to your internal and external customers.

Growth

We provide world class education, tools, tech and expert consulting to craft operating systems focused on long-term growth.

The Innovation Garage®

  • Drives Strategy, Innovation, and Supply Chain Design for New Products, Processes & Services Solutions
  • Provides Expert Consulting supporting your team to grow.
  • Provides Growth Education & Technology Systems to scale.
  • Collaborates with Clients and Industry Leaders to solve growth challenges.

Vision

To be recognized as a premier organizational growth firm partnering with industry leaders, driving creative thinking that adds value, and generating the long-term growth of our clients.

Mission

Make Things. Make Things Better. Teach Others.®

To deliver unique product, process, service, and supply chain solutions in change management through a powerful combination of expert consulting and designing unique systems to Innovate – Accelerate – Execute – Amplify® our client’s long term growth.

Values

Integrity – Valuing integrity in the workplace means that we strive to do the right thing, even when no one is looking.

Innovation – Challenging yourself to see what’s possible to better meet the needs of your team, your clients, your organization, and yourself. We recognize that each of us is a continuous work in progress, striving to improve and do better. We think of creative ways to solve tough problems. We take calculated risks. In all situations, we will keep a forward focus and search for ways to deliver creative thinking that adds value.

Transparency – In all activities, the organization and it’s team members are always upfront and visible about the actions we take, and whether those actions are consistent with our values. When necessary, we will have honest and helpful conversations with our internal and client team members. We will demonstrate courage to have backbone, disagree, then commit to the plan. We will own our failures. We will always fail forward, as a failure is a learning opportunity to grow.

Trust – We believe that trust is the foundation of relationships. We strive to be inspiring others to always be truthful and fair. We give trust freely to our team members and our clients. We expect the same in return. These principles are held higher than profit and traditional organization goals.

About Founder and Proprietor Jon Washington

Jon Washington profile

Jon Washington

Founder & Proprietor

Jon Washington is founder and proprietor of The Innovation Garage®. He is passionate in sharing his 25+ years experience and lessons learned in change management for entrepreneurial product, process, service and supply chain solution delivery. Jon has worked with start-ups, non-profits, privately held, and publicly traded organizations all across the world.

This is accomplished by working with others to achieve organization growth goals by blending strategy, and applying targeted education with application of systems science to help teams execute on their growth goals.

He also works with non-profit and grade school science, technology, education and math (STEM) programs to inspire careers in technology and entrepreneurship.

Jon earned his Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering with concentration in Polymer Specialization from the University of Akron and his Master of Business Administration in Operations and International Business from Malone University.

In addition to obtaining his Innovation Master Black Belt in Innovation Education, he currently serves as an Advisory Board Member for Baldwin Wallace University’s Center for Innovation and Growth, and acts as a advisor with The George Washington University’s Digital Marketing Program, parterning with Zschool.

Jon and The Innovation Garage® team also support Inclusioneers, a non-profit partnering engineers with private and public sector organizations to develop adaptive equipment for children with developmental disabilities.

The Innovation Garage® was launched in 2012 to help organizations focus on long-term growth.

Jon Washington is Founder and Proprietor of The Innovation Garage. He has worked with non-profits, mid-market, Fortune 1000 Publicly Traded and US Government organizations.

Industry Segments that Jon and the team are supporting in change management include:

Automotive, Aerospace, Banking, Broadcasting, Consumer Packaged Goods, Fintech, Financial Self Service, Food Service, Food Safety, First Responders, Hospital Networks, Medical, Military, Manufacturing, Non-Profit, Polymer, and several local and global Universities.

Some representative client organizations are;

Acura, Honda, Toyota, Harley-Davidson, Illinois Tool Works (ITW), Diebold Nixdorf, Business Units of Hallmark and Mars Foods, Dräger, Curlin Medical, Yazaki Automotive, Timekeeping Systems, Mane, DRB Systems, Procurement Leaders Network, Aberdeen Executive Summits, COSE Inc-Fuse, FirstEnergy, Navair, The Telos Alliance, Akron Children’s Hospital, Neogen, Design for Manufacturing Summits, Select USA Investment Summits, Baldwin Wallace University, George Washington University in partnership with Z-School, and MakerFaire with The Henry Ford.

The strategy consulting, team building and education experience in change management includes:

  • Leadership and coaching of CXO level leaders and teams.
  • Innovation Education, Systems and coaching for startups to the global Fortune 50.
  • Organizational Growth and Innovation Strategy with applied System Science.
  • Initiatives to accelerate speed to market.
  • Product, Process, Service and Supply Chain Design and Scaling
  • Design of complex system solutions including software & hardware.
  • Initiatives to program manage enterprise wide cost savings programs, with thousands of projects in play.
  • Processes for advanced technology to meet product Launch cost targets.
  • Supplier Selection and Matching to advanced technology roadmaps.
  • Open Innovation Programs to accelerate speed to market.
  • Global Procurement, Logistics & Supply Chain Development.
  • Finance Team Development for Net Margin Improvement.
  • Collaborative Negotiation, Contract Design, and Enterprise Risk Programs.
  • M&A Due Diligence for Private Equity Investment.

Prior corporate experience includes working for Goodyear, Telxon Corporation, and Diebold in various design, program management, and supply chain leadership roles.

Jon was also co-founder of Design Dynamics, an Akron based product development consultancy.

The teams The Innovation Garage® has built include design and collaboration with others on over 125+ US & Global patents. These unique innovations have generated over $1B in positive margin revenue and $350M+ in cost and service life cycle savings.

Jon also serves as an Advisory Board Member for Baldwin Wallace University’s Center for Innovation & Growth, and mentor’s start ups with community impact programs with the JumpStart organization.

The Innovation Garage® team also supports the Inclusioneers, a non profit founded in partnership with the local developmental disabilities board that uses volunteer engineers from university and industry to build adaptive equipment for special needs children.

Jon is most proud and blessed to be supported in this journey by his closest and most trusted growth advisors.

His wife of 24 years, Kris, and their three children Alec, Aaron, and Alaina.

These advisors offer the the close in insight, support, guidance and fresh perspectives that are the key to helping him help others to be successful.

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