A Job Description for An Open Innovation Leader
Open innovation has matured over the years, but what is actually required of an open innovation leader in 2013? Here you get a quite unique look at what a large, multinational company expects as I can share this job description with you.
It is quite comprehensive. One of the few things that I would have added would evolve around the internal issues (stakeholder management, internal facilitation and integration of internal and external resources) related to making open innovation happen. I assume they will dig into this during the interviews.
This is a real job opening so feel free to apply or recommend this job opening to qualified people. The position is based in Neenah, Wisconsin. Check the end of the post for contact information.
Here it goes:
Position Summary
The Open Innovation Leader will drive external origination for our client’s consumer retail business, with emphasis on the New Category Development (NCD) area. This key product development leader will be responsible for translating both product and technology leads into early stage innovation projects utilizing a consumer research and design approach in partnership with product development teams. The Open Innovation Leader will also drive product/technology scoping, technical IP evaluation, and third party investigation of academic and industrial sectors that are relevant to the company.
Core Responsibilities
- Lead technical IP strategy/landscaping for NCD projects & business interests, in close collaboration with Legal
- Work with category teams (focus on New Category Development) & Product Applications Team to build commercialization opportunities from open innovation leads
- Liaise with external technology partners & experts, and together with Legal initiate CDA’s & JDA’s for key projects
- Build external network – includes tech scouting, IP search companies, as well as Open Innovation conferences, conventions, experts, & solution providers
- Actively connect internal partners across R&D technology platforms, and other company operating business R&D groups and across the enterprise to find optimal solutions for NCD opportunities
- Lead Knowledge Management & Competitive Intelligence for innovation activities within NCD, leveraging R&D library team & capabilities
- Identify and help assess potential acquisitions
Critical Success Factors
The Open Innovation Leader for our client will be a highly flexible and adaptable executive who will create sustainable value and business growth by accomplishing:
- Creating and deploying a holistic approach to open innovation that leverages best practices into an integrated market-based-management (MBM) open innovation capability.
- Position open innovation within the company’s consumer products as “upstream” thinking relative to innovation and identifying the “unknown”. Create an ecosystem to translate opportunities into an experimental discovery mindset.
- Provide methodology and thought leadership to new and active categories across the company’s consumer portfolio.
Leadership Traits
Technical Understanding and Business Acumen: Applies technical skills, tools and processes to create value. Knows the business and the mission-critical technical and functional skills need to perform the job at a high level. Understands various types of business propositions and understands how the business operates. Learns new methods and technologies easily.
Learning Agility: Learns quickly when facing new problems. Is a relentless and versatile learner and is open to change. Learns through successes and failures. Enjoys the challenge of unfamiliar tasks and can quickly discern the underlying structure of anything.
Strategic Agility: Sees ahead clearly and can anticipate future consequences and trends. Is future oriented and offers broad knowledge and perspective. Can articulately create visions of possibilities and outcomes. Will create competitive advantage and breakthrough strategies and plans.
Managing Complex Decisions: Can solve even the toughest and most complex of problems. Great at gleaning meaning from whatever data is available. Is a quick-study and adds personal wisdom and experience to arrive at best conclusion and solution.
Creating the New and Different: Is able to recognize the next great breakthrough. Is creative, a visionary, and can manage innovation through effective strategy. Can create and bring exciting ideas to market and is comfortable speculating about alternative futures.
Innovation Leadership: Provide the necessary critical thinking to determine the necessary approaches to get things done. Offers good judgment about which creative ideas and suggestions will work; has a sense about managing the creative process of others; can facilitate effective brainstorming; can project how potential ideas may play out in the marketplace.
Action Oriented: Enjoys working hard and is full of energy. Can be counted on to exceed goals successfully and is consistently a top performer. Steadfastly pushes self and others for results.
Integrity and Trust: Is widely trusted; is seen as a direct, truthful individual; can present the unvarnished truth in an appropriate and helpful manner; keeps confidence; admits mistakes; doesn’t misrepresent him/herself for personal gain.
Experience and Educational Requirements
The ideal Open Innovation Leader will leverage a verifiable success track record with a minimum 7-10+ years of related and progressive R&D or product leadership experience including product commercialization. Experience gained from working with external technology partners with a track record for commercializing the external or partnered technology is considered essential. Working knowledge of intellectual property and patent strategies is highly desired for the role. Experience creating a new product opportunity from inception to launch is a strong plus. An undergraduate degree in Engineering or Science is required and an advanced degree is strongly preferred.
For additional information contact:
Brian McGowan
Executive Vice President and Managing Director
DHR International
100 Galleria Parkway, Suite 1150
Atlanta, Georgia 30339
Email: bmcgowan@dhrinternational.com
Gary Ruffcorn
Principal
DHR International
100 Galleria Parkway, Suite 1150
Atlanta, Georgia 30339
Email: gruffcorn@dhrinternational.com
Nice job description. Stefan does this stand out as a good outline of the role or do you have other examples to share?
I have seen a couple of other job descriptions for similar positions and I would say that this is quite good. Unfortunately, I cannot share the others, but I will try to do similar blog posts in the future.
Hi Stefan:
This is a great job description! What I particularly like is that they have integrated the key challenges of the role *within* the Leadership Traits rather than simply laundry-listing the usual and somewhat cliched characteristics, such as effective communications, leadership, project management etc. Some original thought was put into writing this job description, I think.
Also, it's very interesting to see that they have built in (at least implicitly) room for the kind of trial-and-error exploratory approach that is critical for innovative, breakthrough technologies. E.g., "Learns through successes and failures." This is not something one would normally see in a job description!
Thanks for finding this one!