Corporate Innovation Manager - Durham, United States - RTI International

Description

Overview:

RTI International is an independent, nonprofit research institute dedicated to improving the human condition. Our vision is to address the world's most critical problems with science-based solutions in pursuit of a better future. Our staff of nearly 6,000 people in more than 80 countries work to address complex social and scientific challenges on behalf of governments, businesses, foundations, universities, and other clients and partners each year. Our research addresses current and emerging challenges of societal impact.

The Central Innovation Enablement function is a newly established team built to design and evolve our enterprise-level innovation system (e.g., strategy, culture, structure, processes, and metrics). Our business units play a vital role in generating innovative initiatives, driven by deep understanding of market dynamics, operations, and evolving client needs. The Central Innovation Enablement function will act as a catalyst, empowering Business Units with strategic intent, best practices, tools, and data to enable innovation. As part of the Strategy and Transformation group, the Central Innovation Enablement function will also partner with growth functions (e.g., Corporate Strategy, Corporate Development, RTI Tech Ventures, Business Development) to execute our innovation strategy and multiply the impact of our innovation portfolio.

The Innovation Manager will be a key member of the Central Innovation Enablement Team as this role will establish and maintain a process to identify compelling opportunity spaces for innovation across time horizons. Additionally, the Innovation Manager will also support enterprise-level innovation portfolio management and build the organizations capabilities across the innovation lifecycle. As such, this role requires strong innovation management expertise along with the ability to gain buy-in and inform decisions using data and insights.

Core duties include but are not limited to:

Market & Innovation Insight: Build capability to systematically monitor, prioritize and disseminate innovation insights from clients, scientific advances, emerging technologies, and competitive landscapes.

Opportunity Design: Build and maintain capability to identify and shape potential opportunities for strategic innovation. These opportunities will include a balance of incremental innovation as well as potential breakthrough innovation within the climate, health, education, and equity domains.

Ideation and Concept Development: Facilitate ideation sessions to enable diverse teams to translate customer problems within opportunity spaces into hypotheses and scope new solutions to test.

Portfolio Management: Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the impact of our innovation portfolio, support regular portfolio review meetings and develop reports for stakeholders across RTI.

Cross Functional Collaboration: Maintain relationships with subject matter experts and Business Unit Innovation leaders to understand evolving market needs, internal capabilities and to implement cohesive innovation strategy.

Innovation Culture: Advance culture of experimentation within the organization, connecting teams across business units to share best practices, methods, and practical learnings from innovation.

Job Requirements are a combination of qualifications and related experience. Judgment of an acceptable equivalent combination, on an individual basis, is the responsibility of Management.

Bachelor's Degree and 12 years of experience, Master's degree and 10 years of experience, PhD and 6 years of experience, or equivalent combination of education and experience.

Innovation Management: Demonstrated expertise in building internal capabilities to optimally enable innovation and create new value for the organization. Proven experience working on innovation efforts using sound innovation management models and toolsets to engage and guide innovation teams throughout the development lifecycle.

Strategy Execution: Demonstrated experience in supporting and implementing enterprise level strategy and strategic thinking capabilities, with a keen emphasis on innovation and the implementation of transformative practices.

Market Understanding: A deep comprehension of the U.S. government or international development sectors, including familiarity with agencies focused on health, education, environment, and energy.

Market Analysis and Growth Identification: Proficiency in external market and opportunity research, analyzing current and future markets for growth opportunities, with the ability to translate client needs into new opportunities.

Communication: Advanced proficiency in supporting communication for change initiatives across multiple stakeholders within an organization; Ability to effectively communicate complex technology concepts to diverse stakeholders.

Collaboration: A well-documented history of cross-functional collaboration among various business units and growth functions, spearheading key strategic projects.

External Relationships: Participate in public and private activities that develop external relationships.

Demonstrated success in project and/or product portfolio management.

Excellent knowledge of MS Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel.

Core Competencies:

Managing Teams

Technical Credibility

Business Development

Cross- Functional Collaboration

Ideal candidate will also have:

Formal training or certification in innovation/user-centered design processes

Familiarity with future-casting or horizon scanning methods

A history of supporting new business ventures and alliances

For San Francisco, CA USA Job Postings Only: Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. Further information is available here.

The anticipated pay range for this role is listed below. Our pay ranges represent national averages and may vary by location as a geographic differential may be applied to some locations within the United States.

RTI considers multiple factors when making an offer including, for example: established salary range, internal budget, business needs, and education and years of work experience possessed by the applicant. Further, salary is merely one element to our offer.

At RTI, we demonstrate our commitment to rewarding individual and team achievement through a total rewards package. This package includes (among other things) a competitive base salary, a generous paid time off policy, merit based annual increases, bonus opportunities and a robust recognition program. Other benefits include a competitive range of insurance plans (including health, dental, life, and short-term and long-term disability), access to a retirement savings program such as a 401(k) plan, paid parental leave for all parents, financial assistance with adoption expenses or infertility treatments, financial reimbursement for education and developmental opportunities, an employee assistance program, and numerous other offerings to support a healthy work-life balance.