Hiring Innovation

HIRING INNOVATORS
How Innovation Teams Bring on Top Talent

HIRING INNOVATORS
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 3
GETTING THE BUDGET 4
DESCRIBING THE ROLE 6
WORKING WITH HR — AND DOING YOUR OWN MARKETING 8
SCREENING CANDIDATES 10
POST-HIRE CONSIDERATIONS 12
CHART: BRINGING IN OUTSIDE TALENT — A PHASED APPROACH 13
CONCLUDING RECOMMENDATIONS 14
SAMPLE JOB DESCRIPTIONS 15
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2 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

HIRING INNOVATORS
Introduction
If innovation is about off-angle thinking, collisions of concepts that come from different fields, and opening
windows to the outside world, then why are so many innovation teams made up entirely of company insiders?
It’s akin to putting a handful of smart people from Amtrak in a room, telling them to think big thoughts,
and expecting a fuel-efficient supersonic jet to emerge. Not gonna happen.
And that’s why we believe homogeneity is one of the biggest weaknesses of today’s innovation groups.
Why do companies draft people as innovation leaders who already work within their walls? Most innova-
tion teams are small and their budgets are tight. There’s also a feeling that understanding the culture — and
what it takes to get things done — is crucial.
Our 2015 Benchmarking Report found that 55 percent of innovation teams have fewer than ten em-
ployees. And it was rare to find a budget line item, whether ideation, IT infrastructure, or events, where
companies were spending millions, rather than hundreds of thousands of dollars. When we asked about
money being spent on personnel, half of our respondents said it was less than $1 million. (Research and
development groups, obviously, tended to be larger and have access to bigger budgets.)
Yet many innovation teams and R&D groups already understand that bringing in outside perspectives
and skill sets not represented at their company can be a key to their long-term success — whether that’s an
entrepreneur who has experience with pop-up retail or a data scientist who can nimbly sift through massive
datasets.
One other benefit of the outside hire: “It can be hard for existing employees to break
their assumptions of how things are done,” says Kelly Olin, a Group Manager for Enter-
prise Growth Initiatives at Target, the $73 billion Minnesota retailer. External hires can
come in with the attitude of “we’re going to go way faster than we’re used to, and we’re
going to have progress over perfection,” says Olin, who was involved earlier this year in
hiring three new “Entrepreneurs-in-Residence” at the company.
At Houston-based Reliant Energy, part of the $16 billion utility NRG Energy, Senior
Olin
Director of Innovation Scott Burns says he is helping the company continue to expand
beyond residential electricity service, with a team that is half insid-
ers with “diverse experience and that entrepreneurial spirit,” and half new hires. “Our
last several hires have come from different industries, including a former brand manag-
er from the consumer packaged goods industry and a customer experience lead from
Thomson Reuters who also spent time at Intuit,” Burns says. “That mix of talent is really
helpful as we generate new ideas.”
So how are innovation and R&D groups bringing in fresh talent? We talked to 16
Burns executives who’ve recently been doing that to get their advice.
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Getting the budget

Most of the executives we interviewed acknowledged the need to operate small and scrappy teams, and add
help from “fractional” resources within the company, or external consultants, as a first step. At Starbucks,
some of the resources at the Sirenworks concept innovation group consist of employees rotating through
on temporary assignments, and outside consultants with expertise in a particular area. “Our finance people
really appreciate this approach, as it demonstrates fiscal responsibility,” says Rachel Antalek, the team’s
leader. “When we need the permanent headcount, they tend to trust us that we’ve considered the non-per-
manent headcount alternatives.”
At a $1 billion company in the education industry, the head of new product development says that getting
budget approval for outside hires requires three steps:
1. Listing the key skills that are needed for the role, and demonstrating the absence of that skill set inter-
nally (for example, design thinking, lean startup, agile development, etc.)
2. Documenting the amount of time in terms of full-time equivalent (FTEQ) employees needed for suc-
cess, and the available resources in the existing matrix team to provide that level of support.
3. Providing senior leadership with detail on activities that the competition is undertaking that can put
our current cash cows in jeopardy (this is best done in a one-on-one setting.) That underlines the need
for the innovation team to move quickly and bring on additional staff.
A senior innovation manager at a Fortune 500
commercial real estate firm says that it typically
“It’s foolish to try to save money by assigns one manager and one analyst for each ex-
not bringing the right people with the periment it is conducting. When there are a num-
ber of experiments being run simultaneously, that
right skill sets onto the project team. can require adding more staff, says the executive.
That can lead to projects that fail not The need for additional hires is “presented to our
because the customer didn’t want a Innovation Steering Committee for approval, and
then submitted to our capital committee for final
new offering, or the technology didn’t approval.”
work, but because there was a gap Gareth Ross of MassMutual, a Senior Vice
President who oversees four new ventures at the
in skills or experience on the team.”
insurer, says that in exploring new concepts, you
can always expect a failure rate of at least 50 per-
cent. But “it seems foolish to try to save money”
by not bringing the right people with the right skill sets onto the project team, he says. That can lead to proj-
ects that fail not because the customer didn’t want it or the technology didn’t work, but because there was a
gap in skills or experience on the team. “This is the internal argument I make,” Ross says. “If we are going
to try, let’s pour our resources into keeping the clearest possible signal [of whether the concept is working,]
and then optimizing the cost side once we look to scale, presuming success.”
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At Zodiac Aerospace, Director of Innovation and Business Development Craig Damlo says that his com-
pany’s budget process begins about six months before the fiscal year starts, and that’s when he has had to
line up approvals for outside hiring. “We show the need and the projected budget to our leadership, and
they approve or disapprove,” he says. Damlo’s team consists of himself and two other people — both of whom
were hired from outside about two years ago. One came from a competitive company, and the other from the
aerospace industry, but outside of his division’s focus, which is aircraft oxygen systems.
Many companies told us that hiring consultants and contractors, and borrowing a few hours here and
there for internal resources, is the essential first phase for most innovation teams. “It’s almost like a test-
and-learn period for your resources and your money, in terms of what you can accomplish,” says Mark Nit-
key, a long-time innovation and store design executive at retailers like Ahold, Victoria’s Secret, and Apple.
“Once we showed results, then we got extra budget and people. And we had already put
together a strategy and a map of what the team would look like and would be able to ac-
complish with those extra resources.”
Sometimes, hiring the right new staffers requires not just a budget increase, but dis-
cussions about adjusting the compensation for particular roles. When hiring for Staples’
network of labs, where the $23 billion office supplies merchant builds mobile apps and
enhancements to its website, Chief Digital Officer Faisal Masud says, “We put in a sig-
Masud nificant amount of effort into revising our pay structure, and creating attractive roles
with a long runway for the right talent. I had to dig into my own personal network [when
it came to recruiting,] and change a lot of structure here in terms of how we bring them in, where do they
work, how virtual are they, and how do we compensate them.”
At Target, pay grades are traditionally tied to years of experience and the number of direct reports. “We
partnered with HR to come up with a going rate salary to attract the right people,” says Olin.
But at most companies that are creating new innovation teams or setting up labs, external hiring is the
exception rather than the rule. “There have been lots of internal transfers into innovation roles that have
been created, but very little external hiring,” says Ken Durand, who runs the Atlanta Idea Factory at Erics-
son, the Swedish provider of telecom technology and services. That’s not atypical.
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Describing the role

Nearly every executive we interviewed brought up the difficult task of describing the open job in a way that
would attract the right candidates, and giving it the right title.
“It’s hard to convey in a job description what our team does,” one executive said. “People we’ve hired have
said, ‘Wow, this is totally not what I imagined through the job posting. This is so much better. You need to
do a better job of conveying what you do in your job posting.’”
At Starbucks, the Sirenworks team defines its mission this way: “The global concept innovation team is a
newly-created group chartered to push the envelope of what is possible for both Starbucks and the retail restau-
rant industry, while acting in service to the Starbucks mission.” That’s included with the team’s job listings.
At MassMutual, Ross says he is reluctant to use the word “innovation” in job descriptions:
…We basically identify a market, or a group, or a problem that we’re trying to solve in the next
three to five years. The job description becomes, “We want people who want to solve this problem,
starting from scratch.”
We’re basically creating an environment where people have full autonomy, and we have to dictate
some of the early technical skill sets that are required… The job description is written in terms of the
thing we are trying to solve for, with some high-level technical [specifications and requirements.]
That attracts, in our minds, people who want to innovate to solve problems [and] who do not have
a status quo bias. We back that up by building a culture…that lets those individuals go 100 percent at
that as a startup for a defined period of time, to see if we can scale it or not.
At Zodiac, the two new hires were dubbed “Innovation Engineers.” Damlo says, “We wanted one per-
son who was good at building relationships with our big customer, Boeing,” and lots of
industry experience. That individual was someone that Zodiac identified who was work-
ing at a competitor. “The other position we made very generic. We specifically wanted a
mechanical engineer, someone who could do our CAD [computer-aided design] work.
But we didn’t say we were hiring for an innovation group.” Damlo filled the former role
right away, but says it took about six months to fill the latter.
Target executive Kelly Olin says that she learned about the importance of creating a
Damlo
title that resonated with the sorts of people the company was hoping to attract:
We originally used the title of Growth Team Leader. It was an internal title, but it didn’t amount to
anything in the innovation space.
With Growth Team Leader, we couldn’t attract the quality of candidates we needed. We got a
ton of internal applications. Moving to that Entrepreneur-in-Residence [title] was big. Entrepre-
neur-in-Residence signals you’re doing something different from everyone else. People are used to
seeing Director of Innovation. EIR got people to return our phone calls.
Olin says that the job description was unlike any Target had written before “in that it stated different
kinds of things a job prospect had done, and was expected to do.” The pay rate was also adjusted “to attract
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the right people,” she says.

At Hospital Corporation of America, the Nashville based network of hospitals and surgical
centers, Assistant Vice President of Development & Strategic Innovation Chip Blaufuss says he
relied on job descriptions on InnovationLeader.com’s Resource Center to shape a job description
he wrote earlier this year for a Director of Strategic Innovation. “What we needed in this position
was someone with a good strategic mind, a solid healthcare background, and the ability to think
about process and protocols,” Blaufuss says. Here’s an excerpt: Blaufuss
Strategic Innovation is a new HCA initiative focused on supporting and accelerating in-
novation across the enterprise. Strategic Innovation aims to support innovators across HCA with re-
sources and insight to accelerate their efforts to address pressing challenges with creative solutions.
This position will…play a key role across three critical Strategic Innovation functions:
• The development and shaping of an innovation portfolio consisting of ideas and projects from
across HCA
• The research and identification of healthcare trends as well as the prioritization of specific
focus areas for innovation activity
• The support of prioritized innovation projects with resources and expertise
This position will require an ability to manage multiple work efforts simultaneously with participa-
tion from leadership across HCA as well as external partners. This position will require strong stra-
tegic thinking, an ability to convert strategy into discrete tactics & actions, and an ability to manage
cross-functional teams without direct reporting authority over most team members. Candidates should
have a strong understanding of healthcare along with consulting experience in strategy and planning.
Unlike Ross at MassMutual, Blaufuss told us that he felt using the word “innovation” made hiring easier.
“The amount of talent and the quality of the résumés was unbelievable,” he says. “People were willing to
move to Nashville for it. Everyone wants to work in innovation.”
At Visa, Senior Vice President of Innovation and Strategic Partnerships Bill Gajda says that the Foster
City, Calif. company didn’t have existing job descriptions three years ago, when the company started build-
ing its team from scratch. But he says that crafting the perfect description wasn’t essential — as long as you’re
open to improving it over time.
We looked at some benchmarks in other technology companies that we respected, to see how they
would describe jobs to get the best candidates. What I’ve also discovered is that you only need to get
the job description partially right. Because by definition, it’s innovation and so there isn’t necessarily
a cookbook; there’s no formula. As much as anything [related to someone’s past experience], we’re
trying to hire a type. I found that if you just write an “OK” job description, the power of the Visa
brand, and the space that we’re in — which is high-tech — is enough to get people in the door so you can
have that conversation. Then you almost end up re-drafting or re-tweaking the job description as you
go along, because you learn so much from these candidates in terms of what you’re really looking for.
See the final section of this report for a sampling of recent job descriptions.
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Working with HR — and doing your

own marketing
All of our interviewees said they’d worked with their human resources departments, internal recruiters, or
external recruiting agencies to source candidates. But they also told us it could be challenging to commu-
nicate exactly what they were hunting for, since many of these internal and external partners hadn’t worked
to fill these sorts of roles in the past.
How to deal with that? In one case, a commercial real estate firm had one of its internal recruiters “shad-
ow” the innovation group for a day, peppering the team members with questions. An executive there says,
“It was a great way for her to really see what we
do, and she walked away with a really good sense
of what our team needed when we used certain “I pushed our recruiter to find people
buzzwords like ‘iterative,’ ‘design thinking,’ ‘us-
er-centric design,’ and those sorts of skills that
who are at companies that have
we’re looking for in candidates.” been disrupted and responded,
Nitkey, who was until recently Senior Vice have made cloud and digital
President of Innovation at Ahold, the Dutch gro-
cer, says that it can be good to assertively suggest
transformations, and have reacted to
places where HR should post ads; professional and embraced industry disruption.”
organizations and trade groups, for instance, can
have job boards that are sometimes overlooked.
— Matt Joe, Avanade
Others say they’ve built a network on Linke-
dIn of hundreds or thousands of people who have
worked in corporate innovation, digital, R&D, and product development roles, which can be useful in pro-
moting open positions or sourcing prospective candidates. “What continually surprises me, even with the
external recruiters that we’ve used, is that I can do a search on my connections, and find better candidates
than they do, even though they’re searching LinkedIn with their premium, recruiter-type account,” says
one executive working for a $15 billion manufacturer in the Midwest.
Target says that relationships with a venture capital firm and an incubator helped it
connect with two of the people it eventually hired as Entrepreneurs-in-Residence. A
company recruiter also spent a significant amount of time talking to people in the start-
up sector to build a roster of good prospects, Olin says.
“I pushed our recruiter to find people who are at companies that have been disrupted
and responded, have made cloud and digital transformations, and have reacted to and
embraced industry disruption,” says Matt Joe, Chief Technology Innovation Officer for
Joe
North America at Avanade, a $2 billion consulting firm. “Who is the person who pushed
John Deere to become more than tractors, and offer electronic solutions? Who helped
Wal-Mart build its online presence?”
Word-of mouth, and encouraging existing employees to spread the word about openings, is one way that
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Visa attracts talent to its innovation group. “I’d would say at least half of our hires have been references from
individuals, as opposed to a LinkedIn search or some kind of recruiter search,” says Gajda.
The executive from the education industry said that he has partnered with the entrepreneurship center
at a nearby university, working with students there to prototype and test concepts. That, he hopes, could be
a way to eventually source entry-level staffers for his team. MassMutual has partnerships with three colleges
around Amherst, Mass., the site of one of its data science labs, including a program at Smith College called
the MassMutual Women in Data Science Program. “There’s a massive untapped resource — and you signal
that you’re going to support that untapped resource,” says Ross. “Supporting women in the sciences, wom-
en who code, is consistent with our corporate values.”
Others are exploring relationships with startup accelerators, or visiting local incubators on a regular
basis, as a way to identify entrepreneurially-minded people who may be interested in a
more stable environment, benefits, and a regular paycheck.
One area where we saw a bit of activity, but where most innovation and R&D groups
can drastically improve: creating websites, videos, blog posts, and other content that
helps to raise their profile in their industry and beyond it. This can be as simple as
publishing a Medium post or a YouTube video that describes your work so far, or your
mission. This ensures that high-quality candidates find you, and reduces the amount of
“active selling” you have to do to get them onboard. At Lowe’s, the North Carolina home Nel
improvement retailer, Kyle Nel says that the standalone website for his team, lowesinno-
vationlabs.com, has served that purpose.
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Screening candidates
Evaluating the candidates who apply for innovation jobs can be a careful balancing act: how much do you
value entrepreneurial DNA and shake-it-up energy, versus industry knowledge and the political skills that
can help attract allies?
Nel, Executive Director of Lowe’s Innovation Labs, says that he deliberately looks for “people that are
known as difficult to manage. Not because they are not good at their job — because they are too good at their
job. They’re the ones that make their boss look bad, and their boss’ boss look bad. They don’t stop. They see
a problem, and it’s like a compulsion.”
“Hand-in-hand with your compulsion comes, ‘I don’t care what the consequences are.’ That’s the
paradox of this stuff. When you don’t care about your job, and you really only care about getting the
work done, somehow, you get promoted and things go well. The corporate innovators that I’ve seen in my
career that are lifers, that are happy where they’re at, they aren’t that way, and that’s not what I look for.”
At Starbucks, Antalek says she scours résumés to see whether a candidate has experience at the
“front end of innovation” — ideation and creativity and listening to customers and employees — but is
also “very good at implementation, the tactical execution aspect of innovation, bringing new products
to market on a continuous basis.” Antalek says that in screening candidates, she has certain non-ne- Antalek
gotiable qualities, like a high creativity and curiosity quotient. “The other thing that I’m looking for
is someone who has taken risks either in their career, or their personal life. I’m looking for passion projects.”
A track record of actually having gotten things across the finish line is important, too. “I want them to be
able to tell me what innovation they’ve delivered, or at least been a part of,” she says.
One critical capability, says Burns at Reliant, is serving as a champion for the team’s projects and helping
to “garner the necessary support” as they move forward. “When building the team, I’m looking for gener-
alists who have a strong handle on how the business runs and on how to interact with different stakeholders.
It’s important that our team embraces outside opinions, as that helps result in the best product, and one we
can actually get in-market.”
Another executive told us that he asks intern and entry-level employment candidates to prepare a presen-
tation before they come in, discussing, for instance, how the company should tackle an emerging technology
or market opportunity. Other companies have candidates conduct “mock facilitations” with a group of
current employees, to understand their people skills — how they influence others and seek out common
ground in a group.
Several executives with whom we spoke said that they’ve found consultants to be good hires. “They
think strategically, and they are used to working on project-type work that changes all the time,” says
an executive in commercial real estate. At the medical device maker Draeger, Director of Hardware En-
Coonahan gineering Tim Coonahan says he has been focusing on people from product development and manage-
ment consulting firms. “I look for the people who are tired of the consulting life and are at a point in life
where they’re looking for a change,” he says. “They’ve done more work on innovation [than most people],
they’ve lived it, and they know what does and doesn’t work in different environments.”
One executive told us that the best people her company had hired were all employed somewhere else, and
“happy at their jobs,” but willing to consider making a switch.
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Being extroverted is a key quality that consumer products giant Kimberly-Clark looks for, says VP of
Executive Development Sue Clark, who recalls a recent candidate who “was out-going,” easy to talk to,
and “asked lots of questions.” “You have to have the kind of personality that will go out and seek people to
collaborate with, and not wait until they come to you,” she says, noting that the stereotypical engineer or
researcher personality profile is a bit more introverted.
Her colleague Tom Merrill, Director of Corporate Strategy, builds on the need for strong communi-
cation skills: “You can come up with all the ideas in the world, but if you can’t put them into language
that the marketers understand around the customer need, then you’re always dealing with a communication
gap, which creates a performance gap and a results gap.” Both Clark and Merrill say they use the interview
process to probe for the candidate’s ability to move between the worlds of technology, business, and the
customer.
For Target’s Entrepreneurs-in-Residence, Olin says that she interviewed hundreds of candidates, and
more than 20 of those were flown to company headquarters. “We really wanted to get it right. We didn’t
want to lower the bar,” she says, adding that these people will hire their own teams, so the choice of the EIRs
would have “a domino effect on future innovation hires.”
Olin was hunting for people with five characteristics:
1. Entrepreneurship: Had they started and run something?
2. Scale: We wanted to find people who done something on a large scale.
3. Exposure: Had they worked in a corporate environment?
4. Retail fluency: You have to understand the elements of a retail company so you know how to poke at it.
5. Intangible hustle: This work is hard and if people don’t crave and get energy from doing this type of
work, it’s easy to burn out. They have to be driven to do this type of work.
Hiring entrepreneurs can be tempting, and at HCA, Blaufuss says that he saw several applicants who had
been involved with startups. After interviewing a few, he decided, “I don’t want to hire an entrepreneur who
will come in to work, and realize they’re just working on internal innovation… We’re in our infancy, and we
have to stand up a capability first of supporting innovation in the company.”
Some companies acknowledge the need to sell themselves in a different way when talking to candidates
who may be reticent to work for a large company, or an industry that isn’t seen as trend-setting. (More ought
to acknowledge that need.) “Insurance is perceived as this backward industry,” says Ross at MassMutual.
He tries to turn that into a selling point, telling candidates, “We’re going to do things we’ve never done be-
fore… that’s incredibly powerful.” But making that case is another reason that new approaches to marketing,
outreach, connections to the startup ecosystem, and thought leadership are required.
Many innovation leaders underscore what Antalek at Starbucks says — that the most important quality is
someone who can point to things they’ve built from scratch, creative cost-savings, process redesign endeav-
ors, or add-on services or features they’ve been responsible for.
“Writers can’t not write,” says Nel at Lowe’s. “I feel like innovators are the same way. Whatever your
background is, you can’t help but fix stuff, or make it better, or realize what’s in your head.”
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Post-hire considerations
New hires need to learn the ropes: the key players and the levers of actually getting things done. And that
can be a slow process.
At Visa, Gajda says that he and his colleagues “try to manage their first six months to a year, so they
have positive experiences. If they don’t have lots of experience in payments, we bring them up to speed very
quickly.” Blaufuss at Hospital Corporation of America has a similar take, mentioning a year-long
process of “getting [a new hire] exposed to different parts of the company, so they understand our
strategy and the innovation capability we’re trying to develop, and our leaders’ expectation for the
innovation capability.”
At Target, the new Entrepreneurs-in-Residence get “surrounded,” Olin says, with Target veter-
ans who have “a really deep proficiency in a particular area within Target.” That helps the entrepre-
neurs access the expertise they need — not to mention the political knowledge of the best way to get
Gajda
stuff done in the company. And it benefits the long-time staffers as well. “A lot of current employees
are hungry to find out how to work [in a new] way,” Olin says.
But it can be tough, one innovation leader in the financial services sector observes, to recruit entrepre-
neurs or people who have worked in start-ups and then retain them for longer than two years. “They tend to
have such a short attention span and constantly want new challenges,” he says.
Creating an environment for a new team can be an important post-hire consideration, too. Nitkey says that
he sought to “create a microclimate” for his innova-
tion team at Ahold. “We took a quarter of one floor of
this 1970s office space, with six-foot high partitions,” “We carved this up from the
in the company’s U.S. headquarters in the suburbs of
corporate culture. We gave them an
Boston. “We gutted it and created an open office en-
vironment. Nobody owns a desk.” Nitkey says that af- ability to have a culture that was for
ter his innovation and store design group finished its them. It feels more like a lab, less like
make-over, the company’s IT Innovation Lab followed
suit. “They found it made it easier for them to hire,”
an insurance office.”
he says. “Environmental change and small cultural — Gareth Ross, MassMutual
changes can make a huge impact on people.”
At MassMutual, Ross says that as he has hired in
data scientists and people to develop new businesses for the life insurance company, he has put them in “sep-
arate spaces” in Boston and Amherst, in central Massachusetts. “We carved this up from the corporate cul-
ture. We gave them an ability to have a culture that was for them. It feels more like a lab, less like an insurance
office.” And part of the culture he wants to support, Ross says, is that they can feel like scientists who happen
to work for a large company. He compares it to a researcher working for a big pharmaceutical company, where
they can contribute to the body of scientific knowledge; for MassMutual’s data scientists, that often means
contributing to open source software projects or public code repositories.
In a similar vein, Avanade executive Matt Joe says that sharing new employees’ successes internally and
externally — making sure their achievements are visible — is important. “We can’t have these people dis-
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appear once they are hired,” says Joe. “Their success is our success.” The company has a private Yammer
group, a web community, and regular conference calls to discuss among its Technology Innovation Advi-
sors “how we’re defining and delivering innovative results to clients,” Joe says.
What we heard most often is that once you’ve successfully started to bring on your first external hires,
you need to ensure that you’ve paired them with experienced veterans, and help them start to build the or-
ganizational connections that will serve as the foundation for success. In most companies, after all, there’s
a natural skepticism about new hires who haven’t yet stumbled and skinned their knees — who don’t know
all the reasons why something new “just can’t work here,” or that something similar to a new concept was
tried 10 years ago.
“We have a lot of support for the innovation agenda at Visa,” says Gajda, noting that it goes all the way
up to the company’s CEO. “In many ways, we’re viewed as the point in the spear, in terms of the direction
the company is going, and that certainly helps you feel relevant in the corporate strategy. It helps you get
integrated into it and feel a part of it.”
Bringing in Outside Talent: A Phased Approach
Phase I Phase II Phase III Phase IV Phase V

Identifying skill/ Building the pres- Making the Making initial Letting those new
experience gaps ence and visibility budget case for hire(s). Ensuring hires publish,
on team. Begin- of the innovation full-time hires; that they “plug in” speak about,
ning to bring in team outside creating right over time to com- or open source
interns, co-ops, the company, comp structure pany and its key some of their (and
consultants to through events, and job descrip- influencers in a your) successful
work in those hackathons, blog tion; working with way that enables projects. That
“white spaces.” posts, videos, HR to help them them to achieve visibility will aid
campus visits, etc. understand roles results. future recruiting
you’re trying to efforts.
fill.
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Concluding recommendations
The first impulse of a newly-created innovation team is to achieve some concrete results, so that there are
successes to point to. That’s essential, but when innovation teams go too long without addressing the prob-
lem of homogeneity, their odds for success decrease.
Our recommendations:
»» If you can’t immediately get the budget for
full-time hires, bring in interns, co-ops, “New hires need help ‘plugging
fellows, part-timers, and consultants with in’ to the existing organization and
different experiences, perspectives, and
passions than the current team.
building the relationships they will
»» Build awareness of your team’s existence
need to be successful. That can be
with visits/presence/sponsorship at local a process that takes years — well
college campuses, startup accelerators, beyond the typical ‘first month’ series
makerspaces, meetups, trade shows and
conferences, and engineering, design, and
of lunches, coffees, and office visits.”
entrepreneurship competitions.
»» Online presence is important. Your team should have its own website, or an area on the company’s
website, that describes its mission, showcases its work, and links to any current job openings. Posting
a job to the company’s career page is not sufficient. (Good examples: MassMutual’s Data Science
group and Lowe’s Innovation Labs.)
»» Innovation teams often benefit from having their own separate workspace, where they can create
their own unique environment and culture. This helps with attracting and retaining people who
might not find the mainline company culture/environment appealing.
»» Being able to publish, submit for industry awards, or “open source” some of the work they do can be
a key attractor for outside talent.
»» Compensation structures may need to be adjusted to attract the right applicants. And cre-
ating rewards/bonuses for successful projects that emulate those you’d see in a startup is
very challenging, but worth doing.
»» New hires need help “plugging in” to the existing organization and building the relation-
ships they will need to be successful. That can be a process that takes years — well beyond
the typical “first month” series of lunches, coffees, and office visits.
»» As your team grows, leverage your new hires to continue building your team’s profile in the Ross
region, and tap into their networks for the next wave of hires.
The goal is to create a reinforcing loop that continually brings in fresh talent that helps your team achieve
even bigger results. As Ross at MassMutual puts it, the key is to become “known as a place where cut-
ting-edge stuff is done.”
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HIRING INNOVATORS
Sample job descriptions

Here are sample job descriptions from a range of industries, listed roughly in order of seniority. See
Innovation Leader’s online Resource Center for even more.
LIBERTY MUTUAL
Head of Innovation Labs
Manages Liberty Mutual’s Innovation Lab, which houses teams dedicated to transformative ideation
and testing for priority domains, as well as a space for LM employees and partnered startups to
collaborate. This role would build the Lab from scratch based on best practice, recruiting top talent,
identifying critical contracted partners, creating the right environment for Innovation, and codifying a
Design Thinking discipline within the team. Role would work closely with Domain Managers, Stra-
tegic Partnerships, and corporate venture fund teams. The Innovation Labs role would also own the
start-up incubator, which helps partnered or invested startups access resources within Liberty to grow.
Finally, this role would own several high profile relationships with academic or consulting partners
(e.g. Singularity University, MIT AgeLab, BCG Digital Ventures) to support success of development or
launches. The goal for the Labs role would be to help drive profit generation of greater than $1Bn
in 5-10 years’ time.
Job Responsibilities
»» Drive transformational innovation within key strategic areas, using available resources to define,
test, and drive new products, services, or partnerships
»» Provide and own best practice support for Innovation methodology to Domain groups, including
leaders and sponsors (e.g. Design Thinking)
»» Manage 1-2 “Lab teams” dedicated to transformative/white space innovation, helping to drive
problem solving, removing obstacles, and providing appropriate resources and environment
»» Work with HR and Functional EVPs to identify top talent within company to join “Lab Teams”;
onboard as appropriate
»» Engage with consultants and/or external labs to accelerate results and/or increase learnings
»» Identify and drive opportunities to engage executives (e.g., advisory roles, offsite meetings) to
ensure clear understanding of value and deliverables from Lab
»» Provide guidance on Lab improvements, including expansion domestically or internationally, re-
quired support services, or other
»» Collaborate with other organizations (partnered large companies, academics) to test and refine
offerings
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»» Identify best practices from similar organizations and implement new methodology as appropri-
ate
Salary (Pay Basis)

»» 151,200.00
Education Level
»» Master’s Degree (±18 years)
Qualifications
»» Bachelor’s degree plus a minimum of 7-10 years of proven progressive experience and a mini-
mum of five years of proven team management and leadership experience.
»» MBA or advanced degree required, experience with other Innovation Lab environment critical,
management consulting or innovation experience strongly preferred
»» Strong ability to effectively interact with all levels of the organization. Must possess strong analyt-
ical, strategic, project management, decision-making and problem-solving skills.
»» Strong communication and interpersonal skills required
»» Passion for research and technology
»» Ability to successfully manage in a test and learn, rapid iteration environment
»» Ability to manage unstructured information and communicate/translate it to others in a more
structure way
»» Ability to think past current constraints and influence others to gain buy-in and alignment
2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
EQUIFAX
VP — Strategy & Innovation
The Vice President – Strategy and Innovation role will play a pivotal role in the development of
corporate and business unit growth strategies, as well as developing specific market plans that will
drive growth. This includes understanding the competitive landscape, market dynamics and trends,
voice of the customer and solution gaps, as well as opportunities for the respective markets.
This key role reports into the SVP of Strategic Marketing and will work closely with the CEO, CFO,
CMO, business units presidents, and other key stakeholders across sales, marketing and product
management, finance and IT teams to deliver profitable growth through these revenue management
programs.
Position Requirements:
»» 8+ years business experience (optimally a mixture of experiences in consulting and in a corpo-
rate environment) in Marketing and/or Strategy; will also consider background in Finance/M&A
»» Experience developing, implementing and delivering growth strategies
»» Experience leading and executing key strategic projects working across multiple stakeholder
groups
»» Experience creating and engaging key partnership strategies
»» Experience tracking and influencing key growth initiative metrics
»» Solid understanding of solution needs and influencing product, sales and other stakeholders
»» Ability to communicate internally and externally across all levels of an organization
»» Strong analytical, strategic and innovative thinker with creative problem solving skills
Position Attributes:
»» Strong analytic capability
»» Process oriented
»» Effectively communicate with Senior Leadership -Team (C-level), Peers, Management, Senior
Management, Clients/Vendors
»» Superior project management and organizational skills
»» Ability to work independently and set priorities to achieve desired results
»» Work as a team player
»» Work effectively and cooperatively with customers, co-workers, vendors and/or management
»» Handle fast-paced and challenging job demands
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CONSTRUCTION SPECIALTIES
Chief Innovation Officer
Construction Specialties, Inc., www.c-sgroup.com, a 65 year old, privately held global manufactur-
ing company is seeking a Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) to join their management team. The CIO
will work to achieve accelerated growth through customer and market focused innovation.
The CIO will be responsible for driving innovation throughout the organization and building an
innovation team that will deliver solutions to uncover unmet customer needs. This will include coor-
dinating go to market messaging, validating messaging against market research and coordinating
with Construction Specialties strategic business units.
Responsibilities:
»» The CIO will lead innovation efforts across the company.
»» The CIO will work with internal and external teams using human-centered design and innovation
methodologies to meet customer needs (Foresight, Insight and Co-Innovation).
»» The CIO will serve as the day-to-day lead in corporate headquarters innovation space manag-
ing interactions with internal stakeholders.
»» This person must be an excellent public speaker and presenter and enjoy working with diverse,
cross-functional teams.
2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
VOYA FINANCIAL (FORMERLY ING DIRECT US)

Chief Digital Officer
Creates the digital vision and enterprise strategy

»» Creating and delivering upon Voya’s digital transformation – designing, maintaining and implementing Voya’s
end-to-end digital strategic vision, strategy and project roadmap (with heavy interaction and input from the busi-
nesses and other functions like analytics); focused on the “what to do that will create customer and enterprise
value,” and infusing this across businesses
»» Bringing an external lens to innovation and cross-sector market activity, including primary external research and
leveraging industry networks
»» Building a set of internal capabilities that can be leveraged across businesses, including test-and-learn assets and
customer innovation centers
»» Proactively searching for new partnership, acquisition, or vendor opportunities with external providers, and jointly
with IT, managing those relationships on an ongoing basis
»» Advising the Digital Steering Committee, OCEO, and Board of Directors on Digital efforts; as appropriate, serves
as external voice of digital
»» Manage and advise the Digital Center team, including ultimate oversight for ensuring that customer experience
journeys are executed across BUs, digital program governance is occurring seamlessly, and value is created as
a result of each journey
»» Responsible for oversight of all Digital KPIs and “Shadow Digital P&L”; accountability and ownership for delivery
will rest with the business, but the Chief Digital Officer is an active partner with each business to identify where
value capture is on track, and intervening when it is not
»» Is a collaborative, visible, and influential leader within the firm, working across businesses and functions to build
‘Digital DNA’ across Voya
»» Builds a customer-centric culture that focuses on enabling seamless, data-driven digital experiences – placing
customer experience at the forefront of all digital solutions; working closely with IT, analytics, and marketing
teams to ensure that digital solutions are being driven from, and contributing to, common data sources; unifying
multi-channel customer experiences
»» Establishes strong, cross-business and cross-functional relationships; builds alignment and sponsorship for all digital
efforts across the enterprise
Desired Skills and Experience

»» 2+ years financial services industry experience with deep understanding of digital solutions and platforms
»» 5+ years in an executive leadership role (VP or higher)
»» Deep understanding and demonstrated creativity in creating value using digital solutions (spanning operational,
enterprise, and web/mobile/social platforms), with a keen awareness of current industry and domain trends
»» Exceptionally strong collaborator; proven ability to lead and influence management and executive colleagues
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HIRING INNOVATORS
»» Unreasonably aspirational; ability to lay out ambitious vision and drive excitement for “step-
change” level of impact
»» Demonstrated ability to lead and inspire teams, to motivate and gain commitment and trust from
direct reports and colleagues
»» Outstanding communication and interpersonal skills, rigorous problem solving ability
»» Passionate about Digital solutions, customer experience, and new technologies; Entrepreneurial
spirit
»» Strong network of business experts and technological innovators via past experience, confer-
ences, industry groups, etc.
2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
DEL MONTE FOODS

VP of Innovation
The Vice President of Innovation is responsible for driving the company’s overall innovation agenda,
overseeing and leading a high performance innovation organization designed to achieve the com-
pany’s growth targets. The Vice President will have oversight for all major product innovation activity
across the enterprise from ideation through commercialization. Building strategies based on thought-
ful consumer insights, thorough competitive analysis and a deep understanding of emerging cultural
trends, the Vice President is responsible for managing the company’s Disciplined Entrepreneurship
innovation process through the requisite strategic, consumer, technical, and business viability stage
gates. The Vice President will work in close partnership with CCSI, R&D, Finance, Sales, Operations
and the Established Marketing Groups to maximize the performance outcomes of all innovation
initiatives. This position will manage and sustain the Innovation Center of Excellence, responsible for
creating and sustaining a culture that fosters and attracts successful innovators and entrepreneurs. The
Vice President will represent the Innovation Group with multiple stakeholders including the executive
team, base brand leaders, retail customers, and the external Innovation community.
Key Responsibilities
Strategy
»» Lead a diverse innovation team to develop a pipeline of strategically-grounded innovative prod-
ucts and new product platforms to build and maintain a scalable innovation model to drive
competitive differentiation and in-market competitiveness.
»» Identify strategies and consumer insights to drive innovations that move the company into “white
spaces” of opportunities.
Innovation and Strategy

»» Develop an innovation strategy that aligns with the company’s corporate goals that lead to sus-
tainable revenue, market share growth, and profitable targets.
»» Manage the Disciplined Entrepreneurship Model to generate breakthrough and/or “bend the
curve” product ideas.
»» Lead, coach and inspire diverse, cross-functional teams to meet goals and timelines.
»» Develop commercialization plans and launch recommendations across all initiatives before tran-
sitioning to Base Brand Teams.
»» Drive organizational capability by building a highly committed and successful innovation team
through training, mentoring, and recruitment of best-in-class talent.
»» Drive collaboration across all stakeholders (CCSI, R&D, Base Marketing Teams, Manufacturing,
Sales etc.) to ensure effective alignment of resources.
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HIRING INNOVATORS
»» Collaborate with CCSI COE to leverage research (historical, secondary) and insights (consumer
and supplier research, trends) to inspire transformative innovative thinking and the fusion of prod-
uct technology with strong design and form.
»» Build consensus and alignment around key innovation project priorities across all stakeholders
through data-informed insights, analytics and a collaborative management style.
»» Apply world-class marketing and sales skills to support the company’s field sales operation with
key account headquarter calls.
»» Champion innovation throughout the organization.
»» Organizational Development and People Management
»» Select, train and manage career development of direct reports as part of the Innovation Center
of Excellence
»» Manage a team of Directors, SBMs and ABMs to meet innovation goals
»» Work with internal and external innovation leaders, universities, trade associations to build and
enhance the capabilities of the Innovation Center of Excellence.
Finance
»» Responsible for the development and management of the annual Innovation ME budget.
»» Manage all projects and product launches within agreed to financial goals.
»» Linking Mechanisms and Expectations
»» Manage internal resources or external innovative/growth agencies to develop concepts and
prototypes.
»» Lead and guide commercialization of all initiatives with all cross-functional teams, partnering
with CCSI, R&D, Operations, Finance, Sales, and Creative Services with a General Manager’s
perspective.
»» Be the face of innovation with customers, partnering with Sales.
»» Lead, represent, and champion innovation in all forums, and specifically with senior executives.
Ideal Background
Education: MBA
Experience: Senior experience in leading and driving marketing and innovation teams. Track record
of successfully bringing new products to market. 15-20 years
2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
GSK
Innovation Director
The R&D Innovation Director for new GSK CH is a member of the Innovation Leadership team and
exists to ensure a full, balanced and consistent flow of consumer-relevant and scientifically differenti-
ated innovation into the development pipeline
»» Ensure that “the voice” of the consumer is heard and that consumer input drives the initiatives
pursued
»» The role ensures identification of new above Category opportunities in line with consumer unmet
needs
»» It also ensures rigor and consistency in applying external best practice, cutting edge tools /
processes within the Innovation team
»» This role will work closely with the Innovation Directors from the categories to ensure that there
is cross category sharing of best practices and innovation
»» A key partner with all support functions Consumer Insights, Marketing, Packaging, Design, Sup-
ply to enable the building of a robust pipeline that is routed on consumer insight and learning.
The source of innovation can be from many sources - this role will take the innovation thinking
beyond molecules into a FMCH environment
»» It requires an extremely strong and broad understanding of the entire innovation and develop-
ment process across multiple functions, strong leadership and influencing skills, a high level of
commercial awareness, as well as high levels of creativity, problem-solving and entrepreneurship
Bachelors Degree in Chemistry, Pharmacy, Pharmacology, Biochemistry or Biological Sciences
»» 10+ years pharmaceutical industry experience
»» Excellent analytical skills, including strategic thinking, ability to frame problems and opportunities
using supporting data, problem solving and measuring impact
»» Demonstrated proficiency at leading complex multi-faceted projects and managing cross-func-
tional teams
»» A thought leader and self-starter, proactively identifying the need for specific analyses and
programs, and marshalling the resources to evaluate and resolve the most challenging, strategic
issues
»» Demonstrated leadership skills, ability to lead change
»» Ability to influence and establish good working relationships with senior executives
»» Excellent communication skills, including presentations, PowerPoint/written, meeting facilitation,
and one-on-one/small group
»» Passion for innovation and excellence in achieving results
2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
PERKINELMER
Director of External Innovation
The Director of External Innovation will be responsible for leading the global PerkinElmer effort to-
ward identifying, evaluating, and championing external projects and partnership opportunities that
further advance our R&D efforts across the portfolio.
PerkinElmer has a strong set of technologies across various end-markets including research, diag-
nostics, and environmental applications. This role, reporting to the VP, Strategy and Business Devel-
opment, will be critical in contributing to the future direction of the company and the investments in
new or emerging technologies. The ideal candidate must be passionate about identifying new and
novel technologies especially in the field of genomic research and diagnostics.
Responsibilities:
»» Identify potential emerging technology opportunities, in-licensing prospects, and partnerships,
supporting one or more scientific areas of interest.
»» Provide scientific evaluation of external opportunities in one or more areas of strategic interest;
lead an initial evaluation, interfacing with cross functional lines as needed and identify the most
promising to pursue further.
»» Work as part of a due diligence teams in support of global business development opportunities
including evaluation of acquired platforms or technologies
»» Act as Chairperson of the company’s global Innovation Review Committee which is responsible
for improving overall innovation efforts across the various business units
»» Partner with Strategy and Business Development colleagues to coordinate activities, collabora-
tions and transact partnerships.
»» Be visible with external scientific community and network with industry leaders as required with
potential partners and at business or technical meetings.
Job Requirements:
»» Ph.D./MS
»» Min. 8 years of professional work experience that include research and or discovery experience
and either exploratory development experience or clinical practice.
»» Understanding of drug discovery research and clinical diagnostics; with preference to candidates
with experience in women’s health and/or oncology
»» Demonstrated experience in evaluating the science of a project and relevance to human disease
is essential, ideally with experience with more than one modality.
»» Exposure to business development activities including various partnership structures and the inter-
pretation of contracts and agreements is a plus.
2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
TARGET
Entrepreneur-in-Residence
Similar Industry Titles and Key Words: Entrepreneur, Intrapreneur, Founder, Head / Leader / Lead
of Growth Initiatives, Labs, New Ventures, Disruptive Innovation, Open Innovation
Primary Function
The Entrepreneur-in-Residence is responsible for building disruptive innovation ventures that extend
beyond today’s core business at Target. S/he will effectively identify significant growth ideas, cre-
ate the case for the investment, build MVPs, iterate in market, and agilely build toward full-scale
commercialization. The leader will have the rare opportunity to create at the leading edge of retail
and consumer products and services, leveraging the assets of Target, in a high-profile position with
widespread organizational impact.
S/he will have a talent for motivating diverse groups of individuals through ambiguity and uncertain-
ty to drive results. S/he has the unique ability to start-up businesses while also knowing what it is to
drive innovation within a large organization.
Principal duties and responsibilities

»» Build new ventures, services and offerings
»» Be mission driven
»» Create and own the vision and investment thesis – considering big consumer and market trends
»» Iterate and scale the ideas aggressively to exceed consumer expectations
»» Build prototypes, pilots, and other tests – spanning physical and digital formats
»» Know when to act in service to the corporation and when to think beyond the core about the
broader needs of the consumer and external market opportunities
»» Motivate the team to do what is needed to drive growth
Requirements
»» Experience as a real-world entrepreneur; strong consideration for building businesses targeting
very large scale opportunities
»» Business chops – strong understanding of the retail industry and how it is changing, inclusive of
traditional brick and mortar, digital and emerging channels
»» Builder chops – being able to fix problems as they occur
»» Corporate chops – experience that spans across start-ups and large corporate environments
»» Strong team builder with excellent organization and people skills and the ability to set priori-
ties,problem-solve, multi-task and iterate well in dynamic, rapidly changing environment
»» Prior responsibility for building an innovation culture, inclusive of hiring, training
»» Robust network of contacts to bring in ideas and expedite current projects
2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
MEDTRONIC
R&D Innovation Manager
Medtronic’s overarching mission is to alleviate pain, restore health and extend life of patients around
the world. One of the largest medical device companies, Medtronic leverages its expertise and
scale to break new ground and define a shift to new value based healthcare in the coming years.
Looking into the next two years, Medtronic aims to remain centered on our core, collaborating with
physicians to create new technologies and services to improve clinical outcomes. This will be done
through the following key strategies:
Continued operational execution
»» Implementation of growth strategies:
- Maintain or expand market leadership through therapy innovation
- Expand access to therapy in emerging markets
- Lead transformation to value-based healthcare
»» Increase of shareholder value through best-in-class financial performance
In the next 3-5 years Medtronic will architect and experiment with new value based care models
and is committed to making new investments and creating new business modes that will position the
company to win in the new value based era.
Support the vision and strategic direction of the company. Translate the divisional goals into action-
able plans for the Innovation Management team through the following initiatives:
Provide governance for the portfolio of early stage projects within $5B Surgical Innovations business,
the second largest business group within Medtronic. This includes analyzing existing portfolio of
initiatives, outlining the desired state and developing strategy for closing the gaps through close col-
laboration with Portfolio and Strategy, R&D and commercial partners. Maintain governance system
for the early stage projects as they advance along the pipeline, and set up framework for portfolio
prioritization exercises.
Forge and maintain close links with internal and external stakeholders to ensure the business unit’s
strategic direction is reflective of the latest technological developments. Lead integration of consumer
research, financial, marketing, operating, manufacturing, and supply activities to drive business unit’s
strategies. Monitor major mega-trends in the industry and develop the appropriate response plan
and recommendations for the business unit.
Develop new initiatives within Surgical Innovations to promote ideation and diversification of the
early stage projects. Examples could include setting up innovation tournaments and crowdsourcing.
Initiate and lead cross-functional teams to deliver innovation-related business objectives. Assist ex-
isting COTs with evolution of business models as a part of Medtronic commitment to lead trans-
formation in value-based healthcare. Build and maintain relations with divisional leadership team,
particularly Strategy and Portfolio Management, Marketing.
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HIRING INNOVATORS
Leads a team of three direct exempt level technical reports and manage the Innovation Manage-
ment team’s budget.
Qualifications:
»» B.S. in Engineering or Science and MBA are required, another advanced degree in relevant
discipline is preferred. Minimum of 10 years of relevant experience, at least 5 years of R&D
experience, supervisory experience managing product or technology is a must.
»» Demonstrated proficiency in innovation management and resource planning.
»» Thorough understanding of market dynamics including competitive advantage, procedures, new
markets and technologies.
»» Demonstrated ability to interpret an extensive variety of technical information and deal with sev-
eral abstract and concrete variables.
»» Demonstrated ability to successfully lead people, teams and projects and to get results through
others.
»» Develop and manage a team with strong technical skills and customer/business insights.
»» Ability to manage a platform portfolio, ability to scope and manage local and remote projects.
Competencies:
»» Strategic development
»» Leadership
»» Strategic agility
»» Business acumen
»» Hiring and developing direct reports
»» Interpersonal savvy/influence
»» Building an effective team
»» Technical learning
»» Excellent communication and teamwork skills
2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
JARDEN HOME BRANDS

Director of Innovation Activation
The Director Innovation Activation is responsible for delivering over $50M in annual new product
revenue by 2019. This person must build on our successes and nearly double the current annual
run-rate for new product revenue in one of the fastest growing categories at retail.
This innovation role must balance “fuzzy front end thinking” with “concrete doing skills” to drive proj-
ect management and milestone execution through the innovation group. This is not a “think-tank /
academic” style innovation role that never gets a product to shelf – this is a “practical application /
real-world” player-coach role in a fast-paced, fast-growing and fun company.
This is the “go-to” role on our Fresh Preserving business: high-visibility, high-empowerment, high-drive,
high-risk and high-reward. Fresh Preserving has led our topline growth for 3 years by building on
the consumer excitement around the Art of Personalized Food, the science of home canning and the
fun of Mason jar everything. Your job is to take it next level.
Outcomes
1. Revenue and Margin: over the next 3 years, grow annual new product revenues +$30M from
current baseline.
» Improve margin contribution from NPD by +200 bps over base over the timeframe.
» Deliver 1-2, +$10M platform or product ideas that utilize no more than 5 SKUs to achieve.
2. Strategic Leadership : enhance and / or re-shape the current strategic roadmap to fulfill our
growth objectives.
» Provide critical assessment of our three core platforms: core canning & preserving, home stor-
age & beverage ware, and targeted growth (to be disclosed in the interview process).
» Mature our understanding of industry & category drivers, consumer trends & key needs states,
and the brand & retail landscape within and across established and new platforms
» Develop concrete market structures and go-to-market plans.
» Steward the Ball brand equity through its expansion, ensuring cohesion across new platforms
and preservation within legacy categories.
» Shape our consumer research agenda and its execution across platforms.
3. Innovation Process Management: put the discipline back in our “innovation discipline.” Examine,
refine and enhance the people, the processes and the events within our formal, annual cycle,
ensuring strict adherence to calendared milestones. Execute all with the participation of and
alignment of our Director of Innovation R&D.
4. Project Leadership : operate on two levels.
» Coach: actively participate in the critical thinking behind all projects within the group and help
optimize the execution on-time and on-strategy.
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HIRING INNOVATORS
» Player: actively lead a project (or two). This is a Director job, but this organization runs lean
with hands-on players at all levels; yes, even our CEO.
5. Culture & Talent Development: This role will be a change agent in JHB as we need a step
change in how we approach our innovation efforts. He or she must fit well with our fast-paced
culture and be a strong communicator who can enroll different functional groups, and potentially
different operating company members, to support and execute our plans. Finally, he or she must
help their direct reports and broader teams achieve their career goals through mentoring, training
and coaching

»» MBA required
»» Minimum 8 years of prior marketing experience in the consumer packaged goods industry
»» Consistent track record of delivering outstanding business results, repeatedly driving organic
growth and strategic advancement of brands and businesses.
»» Proven ability to find the consumer, customer and company insights that enable new product
successes using multiple marketing research techniques
»» Relentless drive and towering strengths in administrative and project management functions
»» Ability to take abstract ideas and communicate them simply and effectively across all layers of
the organization
»» Demonstrated track record of attracting, developing and retaining talent
»» Willingness to relocate to the JBC headquarters location in Fishers, IN and travel as needed
(25% of time)
2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
LOWE’S INNOVATION LABS

Director
The principle purpose of the Director, Lowe’s Innovation Lab is to manage and develop the Lowe’s
Innovation Lab and help facilitate an enterprise-wide culture of innovation.
The Director, Lowe’s Innovation Lab will also have primary responsibility to identify and generate
innovation that causes disruptive change in the retail market through a stand-alone innovation lab
with established methods and tools. This position will oversee a team of both Lowe’s employees and
external vendors that are responsible for uncovering and creating new methodologies and solutions
that enable the Lab to achieve its stated goals and purpose.
The Director, Lowe’s Innovation Lab is tasked with championing innovation to the business and will
work closely with leadership across the Lowe’s enterprise to discover and develop cutting-edge
methodologies and solutions. In addition, the Director, Lowe’s Innovation Lab will collaborate with
Lowe’s IT teams to scale and implement the solutions created in the Lab.
Required Minimum Qualifications:
»» Bachelor’s Degree in Business/Computer Sciences/Technology field or related field plus 10 years
of relevant experience OR 10+ years of experience participating in start-up/entrepreneurial role
inside of a large organization
»» 10+ years of experience in a research, innovation, or technology role or equivalent
»» 10+ years leadership experience managing teams in a technology related environment with
direct report responsibility
»» Demonstrated experience leading cross-functional teams
»» Demonstrated experience working closely with senior leadership (VP and above)
»» A track record of successfully creating, co-creating, and evangelizing new ideas, work methods,
and technologies within large corporations
»» A strong extended network of start-ups and innovators
»» Demonstrated ability to bring uncommon partners/vendors together to create something more
than the sum of their parts
»» Demonstrated ability to evaluate solutions and form objective opinions relating to their viability.
»» Ability to communicate with leadership, and form narratives that clearly convey complex concepts.
Preferred Qualifications:
»» MBA or Master’s Degree
»» Industry recognition as a leader and innovator (associations, awards, etc.)
»» Experience in non-traditional innovation techniques/methodologies (e.g. gamification)
»» Demonstrates prior experience leading high-performing teams in fast paced environments
»» Proven experience overcoming resistance in a large corporation to bring innovation to market
2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
STANLEY BLACK & DECKER

Innovation Director
Stanley Black and Decker is looking for a dedicated, self driven, motivated individual as an Innova-
tion Director for a Global New Product Development Team (NPD) in our Hand Tools & Storage busi-
ness unit in New Britain, Connecticut. This role includes product engineering, product management,
product compliance and related marketing activities. The Innovation Director will provide leadership
for the identification and development of leading technology for the next generation of products
with the objective of yielding sustainable competitive advantage and unsurpassed customer value.
Responsibilities
»» Establishes mid/long term NPD goals and trajectories for key technologies which will help the busi-
ness fulfill its long term business objectives, including competitive advantage and leveraging scale.
»» Manages a portfolio of projects ranging from current development to 5 years prior to product
launch; transferring the production-ready technologies to product groups for introduction when
ready to fully commercialize.
»» Explicitly defines, grows, and maintains strategic partnerships in the development of key technolo-
gies; including decisions on core and enabling competencies and how they will be maintained.
»» Provides leadership to all engineering/NPD functions and activities to enable best in class prod-
uct development through common tools, process and methods; applies industry best practices to
further differentiate engineering capability.
»» Repeatedly delivers high impact technologies that noticeably further the competitive advantage
of the business.
Qualifications
»» Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering or business required; Advanced technical or business degree
is desirable.
»» Minimum of 10 years of experience working in a senior leadership positions required. Strong
preference for experience in global industrial companies.
»» Progressive experience in significant engineering managerial and staff positions.
»» Proven capabilities in delivering difficult new product introduction programs.
»» Proven ability to manage technical staff, including the ability to encourage innovation and sup-
port professional development.
»» Advanced project management skills, including problem solving, decision-making, organization-
al and execution skills.
»» The ability to create strong working relationships in a diverse cross culture organization is critical
to being success.
»» Excellent communication and negotiating skills.
2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
VISA
Senior Director — Innovation
Visa’s Innovation & Strategic Partnerships (I&SP) is a global client facing organization that sets Visa’s
public innovation agenda, develops commercial partnerships with industry leading brands and plat-
form providers, and promotes hands on incubation and rapid prototyping to demonstrate the art of
the possible for clients and partners.
The Director – Innovation will design and develop proof of concept using rapid prototyping in a
simulated environment. He/she will interact with executives and others in client and partner organi-
zations to brainstorm co-creation ideas and rapidly turn them into prototypes. These prototypes will
simulate user experiences or business processes, bringing together capabilities within Visa and in the
Visa ecosystem (including clients and partners).
He/she will bring prior experience in hands-on development of solutions, UI and prototypes, and
a close knowledge of developments in technology (mobile, cloud, APIs, etc.) and commerce (om-
ni-channel, digital payments, etc.). He/she is creative and hands-on, developing working prototypes
where necessary and leading other solution developers where available.
Responsibilities
»» Brainstorm with internal and external teams to develop ideas and potential solutions for co-cre-
ation
»» Rapidly convert ideas into working prototypes in simulated environment, mashing together solu-
tions that exist within Visa or externally
»» Ensure feasibility of prototypes by mapping components to actual existing capabilities/assets
(internal and external)
»» Work closely with the Engagement Director to scope plan, critical path and risks
»» Work closely with the teams of clients/partners to understand their deployment environment
»» Demonstrate prototypes to key stakeholders (Visa internal audiences as well as client executives)
Qualifications
»» At least 12 years of relevant experience in product management or technology consulting, fo-
cused on payments and/or commerce
»» Knowledge in mobile application development, web-based systems architecture, service-based
architecture, enterprise application architecture
»» Experience and knowledge of Agile (Scrum) project methodology and practices
»» Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or MIS, or equivalent experience
2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
ILLINOIS TOOL WORKS

Innovation Program Manager
This position will be part of a team responsible for coordinating and facilitating innovation tools
workshops and summits to support the Global Innovation Framework deployment and accelerate
organic growth at ITW businesses. The position will combine project management, coaching,
facilitation, innovation process tailoring, and instructional design activities broadly impacting ITW.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
Ensure the successful deployment of the ITW Global Innovation Framework, including:
»» Coordinate and train ITW businesses on application of Innovation Framework harmonized
»» processes and tools with our facilitated workshop approach
»» Develop and continuously improve a suite of innovation tools workshops (e.g., Value
»» Proposition, Go To Market Strategy, Risk Assessment)
»» Support continuous improvement of ITW innovation processes
REQUIREMENTS:
»» B.A. or B.S. in a technical field required
»» Prior cross functional team leadership and facilitation experience
»» Minimum 5 years of experience with technical product development
»» Ability to manage and prioritize long term and short term assignments
»» Ability to determine resource requirements and understand team dynamics
»» Ability to travel 30%
DESIRED EXPERIENCE AND TRAITS:

»» Experience designing, executing, and tailoring technical product commercialization processes to
fit the needs of diverse businesses
»» Excellent written and verbal communication skills to interact with all levels of the organization
»» Ability to influence change without direct authority
COMPETENCIES:
»» Adaptability and Flexibility
»» Strong Organizational skills
»» Attention to Detail
»» Reduces Complexity
»» Influence Management skills with Executive Stakeholders
2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
»» Public Speaking & Facilitation skills

»» Process-oriented thinking
»» Intermediate Excel skills
»» Advanced PowerPoint skills
»» Event Planning and Coordination experience
»» Familiarity with Microsoft SharePoint and Lync a plus
2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
EASTMAN CHEMICAL
Innovation Manager
The Innovation Manager(s) will lead the assessment and development of the go-to-market strategy
for a broad range of potential product offerings in the coatings and adhesive markets. This position
requires collaboration with Technology, Business, Sales, and Marketing to lead and drive growth
projects, as well as collaboration with external customers, distributors, and other influencers to ensure
all efforts have a strong market connection.
Responsibilities
»» Identifies, develops, and launches market development programs & penetration strategies (utiliz-
ing Stage Gate), resulting in the realization of new business for the Company.
»» Manages the execution of programs that generate new and sustainable growth.
»» Keeps abreast of industry trends, including understanding customer and market trends, technolo-
gies, key buying factors, competitive strategies, strengths & weaknesses, and channels to market.
Synthesizes this information in order to develop value propositions and go-to-market strategies
that are both compelling and value-creating.
»» Works towards key program milestones, initiating marketing programs and providing direction to
the Applications/Technology teams to refine products to support market needs.
»» Coordinates with Internal stakeholders for channel- & application-based objectives to deliver
complete market activation strategies/plans, including pricing strategies and development &
execution of promotion plans.
»» Utilizes best practice marketing tools to gain insights to identify, develop and launch growth proj-
ects, including customer VOCs, customer segmentation analysis, buying process analysis and
competitive positioning analysis.
»» Builds an effective cross-functional project team that will outline and meet key project milestones.
»» Identifies new innovation opportunities using best practice “ideation” tools to drive new value-cre-
ating growth programs through Stage-Gate Process.
»» Manages projects and simultaneously collaborates with multiple stakeholders, balancing tactical
and strategic issues while driving for results. .
Education/Experience
»» Bachelors Degree from an accredited college or university required (preference for Chemical
»» Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Chemistry or other technical degree).
»» MBA a plus or 3-5 years of experience at business or market development
»» Experience in the B&C, transportation, durable industries (sales, commercial, marketing, or tech-
nical service preferred) OR Eastman equivalent experience (sales, commercial, marketing, or
technical) is highly desired.
2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
SONOS
Innovation Manager
Traditional will not work. We are looking for a strategic and creative person who thrives on in-
novation and holds a belief in better. You will play a vital role by engaging with talented people
throughout Sonos to radically amplify the way people experience music. You must believe that
knowledge gathering and education are essential to stimulate and channel innovation, and intel-
lectual property is a core asset in this high-growth business of audio technology. The individual will
use their skillful abilities to stimulate, capture, and ultimately help protect the technological leaps at
Sonos, and ensure that Sonos continues leading the charge to innovate in audio. This engaging
individual will share a passion for audio and possess a desire to understand the Sonos business.
The ideal candidate will be dynamic and flourish in a fast-growing organization that consistently
challenges the status quo.
Responsibilities:
»» Interface regularly with individuals across the organization to stimulate innovation and creative
thinking.
»» Develop ways to energize cross-disciplinary teams to push technological boundaries and en-
hance the user experience.
»» Work with relevant teams to determine innovation development strategies.
»» Capture and document innovation.
»» Gather in-depth knowledge from the patent database and inject the knowledge back into the
organization.
»» Work with counsel to prepare and/or prosecute patent applications on a global stage.
Qualifications:
»» Education: Bachelor’s Degree required, advanced degree preferred (Master’s, Ph.D., or JD)
»» Have a technical background in engineering, physics, or computer science.
»» Demonstrate strong oral and written communication skills.
»» Possess a strong desire and innate ability to collaborate with people.
»» Ability to synthesize challenging technical concepts.
»» Passion for music and strong desire to provide the ultimate home music experience.
* Willingness to travel to Sonos locations.

2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
MCDONALD’S
Global Digital Program Manager — High-Potential Concepts
McDonald’s has bold plans to evolve the customer experience for the digital era, and the Global
Digital team is at the center of this aggressive change. The team is leading the worldwide effort
to develop and orchestrate digital initiatives across every facet of our interactions with customers.
This includes new brand engagement, e-commerce, service delivery, and digital content capabilities.
With the fast emerging digital environment, this team is focused on innovation across the customer
journey in and outside our restaurants, identifying the most meaningful opportunities for our custom-
ers, and developing capabilities to bring them to life. We do this in partnership and teamwork with
our IT organization and markets around the world.
This team was recently formed as [McDonald’s] hired its first Chief Digital Officer, who brings deep
consumer Internet experience. McDonald’s is aggressively looking to grow it’s digital, web and
consumer focused capability by adding top tier talent across the company and within the Global
Digital team.
The team will work in an entrepreneurial and strategic way to push forward ideas, innovation, exe-
cution and culture -- all on behalf of customers.
Our current needs include seasoned digital, social media and Internet talent in functions including
product management, product marketing, digital marketing, community management, business de-
velopment, user experience design, and program management.
McDonald’s is deeply committed to our customer focus, and sits at an exciting juncture where they
are ready to drive their brand to new heights using digital experience and engagement as essential
ingredients.
Responsibilities
»» In this role you will be responsible for driving significant consumer facing programs and projects
as part of the Global Digital team. This is an opportunity to steer game changing initiatives from
the concept stage into the hands of consumers across the globe.
»» Your responsibilities will include steering projects across product management, marketing, en-
gineering, business development, user experience design, QA, and more. You will coordinate
efforts between internal teams across the globe, functional areas and vendors to develop win-
ning solutions. This will happen with great customer focus and passion for driving a high bar for
consumer experience.
»» Establishes and maintains comprehensive Digital Commerce program status.
»» Hands on role in driving program scope definition, product planning, risk management, and
program management in alignment.
»» Ensures key project roles and responsibilities are defined across a complex organization with
multiple stakeholders.
2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
»» Improves processes the Global Digital team will be rolling out to manage scope, delivery, and
coordination of high profile consumer initiatives.
»» Manages project and/or program issues. Sets project quality and performance standards.
»» Ensures the use of best practices and applies lessons learned from previous initiatives.
»» Ensures a positive, collaborative work environment for the team and stakeholders across the
company.
Minimum Requirements
»» A minimum of 5 years of program management experience leading significant consumer tech-
nology products required
»» Significant experience with and passion for consumer facing Internet, web or digital products
»» Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science or related technical field
»» Highly capable of clearly communicating tasks, schedules, risks, and processes to a variety of
business, creative, and technical audiences.
»» Must be organized and capable of managing, tracking, troubleshooting, and problem solving
multiple projects simultaneously in a fast-paced environment with multi-disciplinary teams and
third-party vendors.
»» Self-starter that can drive multiple projects inter-departmentally with minimal guidance/oversight
required.
»» Adapts to changes in workflow and business priorities with ease.
»» Ability to develop project schedules, communicate deadlines, and enforce project milestones.
»» Demonstrated ability to drive project execution in an organized and disciplined manner.
»» Proficient in use of project management and documentation tools.
»» Experience with agile software development methodologies and tools.
2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
BD
Manager — Strategic Innovation
As part of the BD-Medication and Procedural Solutions (BD-MSS) Strategic Innovation Group, the
Manager, Strategic Innovation will identify, validate and develop strategic global growth trajectories
through the analysis of macroeconomic, policy, legislative, competitive, technical and clinical trends.
The Manager will also identify and drive rigorous, cross-functional assessments (R&D, Marketing,
Regulatory, Finance, Medical, Operations) of specific business opportunities that culminate in a
clear, informed recommendation to the BD-MSS Leadership Team.
RESPONSIBILITIES:
»» Accountable for world-wide Strategic Innovation initiatives including: identification, development
and validation of strategic growth trajectories; identification and validation of specific business
opportunities that are aligned with current and future BD-MSS global business objectives.
»» Maintain an overview of market trends, state-of-the-art technology development, and current and
emerging clinical needs.
»» Track relevant competitor actions and develop an understanding of underlying competitor strate-
gic intent.
»» Identify resources, develop external relationships with Key Opinion Leaders and investors and
attend conferences / tradeshows to surface and prioritize new, global opportunities
»» Design and deliver impactful communications to business and company leadership
»» Ensure compliance with BD quality policies, procedures, and practices.
»» Ensure compliance with all local, state, federal, and BD safety regulations, policies, and proce-
dures.
Qualifications
LEADERSHIP:
»» Demonstrate strong and clear accountability for program/initiative success
»» Demonstrate leadership, learning agility and action orientation when facing uncertainty. Instill
confidence through leadership and actions.
»» Conduct and encourage frequent formal and informal communication within the Strategic
»» Innovation function to ensure sharing of insights and best practices
»» Intuitively and quickly assess people and situations and act accordingly. Demonstrate strong
persuasion and negotiation capabilities.
»» Promote and leverage diversity to achieve best outcomes and an inclusive work environment.
»» Ensure all interested parties have opportunities to influence and contribute to decisions and out-
comes.
2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
»» Demonstrate and promote leadership courage by doing what is right.
EDUCATION:
»» MBA with focus on Marketing, Healthcare Management or Finance
»» Bachelors in Science or Engineering
EXPERIENCE:
»» 2-4 years of relevant experience in either:
»» Business development / strategic marketing / cross-functional product development in the health-
care industry, or
»» Management consulting / financial services with exposure to the healthcare industry
»» Demonstrated ability to develop deep, rigorous, analytical analysis that drives business function
improvement, growth opportunity identification, strategy development or technology decision
making
»» Demonstrated ability to independently identify, prioritize and successfully advocate for opportu-
nities to drive growth or improve operating performance
»» Experience with financial models, financial analysis and market analysis required
»» Business development experience preferred
»» Experience with cross-functional, phase-gated product development preferred
REQUIREMENTS:
»» Strong fit with BD values
»» Strong customer focus
»» Highly-motivated, execution-focused leader with the ability to self-define role and activities nec-
essary for successful product commercialization
»» Advanced analytical and problem-solving skills
»» Excellent communication, interpersonal and persuasion skills
»» Ability to multitask and balance competing priorities
»» Ability to use sound, independent reasoning and judgment to establish work priorities and be
flexible to respond to constantly changing priorities and shifting deadlines in a fast paced work-
ing environment
»» Ability to plan multiple work-flows and identify ways to optimize time lines and reduce development risk
»» Ability to reduce complex cross-functional requirements into easy to understand language and
communicate effectively to a cross-functional team
»» Passion for commercializing early-stage opportunities and developing strategy
»» Willingness to travel up to 25%
2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
ALLSTATE
Innovation Manager/Targeted Markets
About the Team:
The Targeted Markets team is responsible for identifying consumer’s insights and needs and explor-
ing opportunities to capitalize on these insights by building new or enhancing existing products and
services for to an appropriate target market; including life-stage segments, demographical segments
and multi-cultural segments. This team discovers and evaluates customer segmented marketing to
launch appropriate product/service ideas, or strategic product extensions; and translates research
discoveries of the various targeted customer-life, demographic and multi-cultural segments into usable
and marketable products/services. Thinking beyond insurance and into Protection and Prevention,
the Targeted Markets team leads, plans and manages all phases of the product/service life cycle
including innovation, ideation, proof of concept, prototyping and launch. The Targeted Markets
team partners with business units to ensure the product/service packaging effectively aligns with the
consumer segment they are trying to reach. This team partners with other Product/Service Innova-
tion & Development teams (Vehicle, Home, PMO) through product/service development and launch
into the marketplace.
About the Job:
The Innovation Manager, Targeted Markets, will be responsible for managing innovation initiatives
for life-stage, demographical and multi-cultural segments, executing initiatives and projects consistent
with business strategies, along with serving as a team and subject matter expert in the area of tar-
geted segments and innovation.
»» Manage products/service initiatives that address customers’ insights and needs based on the
segment being targeted; solve problems and provide continued organic growth to Allstate
»» Design, research, create, evaluate and recommend new innovation concepts and strategies
»» Share authority for decisions that translate strategies into programs and procedures
»» Provide input into the development and implementation of a 3-year product strategy and exe-
cution roadmap based on customer segments, incorporating data from external markets and
consumer insights
»» Introduce and lead change effectively as it pertains to the development of products/service
based on customer insights, ensuring that products are innovatively driven and responsive to
market and consumer needs.
»» Partner with AORs/business units to ensure that products/services are packaged and designed
effectively, aligning with customer insights and preferences, Allstate’s Customer Value Proposition
(CVP) and the customer-life segment being targeted
»» Provide direction and guidance in managing the evolving product/service strategies, working
collaboratively with external vendors, Product Operations, Allstate Technology Operations and
other AORs to develop and deliver new services
2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
»» Contribute to pipeline planning to ensure that innovations are aligned with Allstate strategic goals
and customer value propositions, driven by customer insights, and successful in market.
»» Lead or assist development of resources (methods, tools, templates, etc.) to improve innovation
effectiveness
»» Effectively manage Allstate resources, ensuring quality and timeliness.

»» 7 – 10 years of related experience; expertise in segment marketing, product management, and
new product development
»» Broad expertise in generating, evaluating and implementing innovative product/service ideas
that incorporate customer insights and preferences
»» Expertise in targeting various markets/segments for product and/or services (3+ yrs)
»» Comfort in test and learn environment, with a proven ability to develop and quickly revise busi-
ness tactics to take advantage of market opportunities
»» Ability to analyze and interpret complex concepts and the ability to solve complex problems
»» Ability to measure, evaluate and act on financial and operational results;
»» Advanced organization and project/program management skills
»» Natural curiosity and advanced strategic/analytic skills
»» Advanced communication, presentation and story-telling capabilities
»» Experience in strategic design or other innovation design discipline preferred
»» Bachelor’s degree required, advanced degree preferred
2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
SUN PRODUCTS
Open Innovation Manager
The Open Innovation Manager identifies and integrates 3rd party technologies into Sun Products
offerings. They lead a team of individuals to scout industrial, academic and entrepreneurial tech-
nologies, assessing potential fit with the Sun portfolio through technical and Intellectual Property
due diligence. Activities include developing Suns intellectual property strategy as well as managing
Confidential Disclosure Agreements and Joint Development Agreements with vendors, entrepreneurs
and technology scouting firms. The role is heavily involved in understanding and interpreting the
competitive space of Sun Products.
Essential Job Functions:
»» Partners in cross functional teams to develop and manage technology strategies
»» Develop ownership strategies (IP) and implementation plans for technology platforms
»» Act as the technical liaison with key vendors, external technology partners and early adopters uti-
lizing Open Innovation (OI) methodologies and processes, working closely with Legal to ensure
due diligence (CDAs, JDAs, technology valuation, etc.)
»» Drive Open Innovation and technical initiatives to a rapid, high quality decision point (fail fast, fail often).
»» Act as the bridge from the long term technical development to the business strategy manage
conversion from Technology to Innovation
»» Build networks of technical scouting firms (9Sigma, PHLBurg, Tiaxx, etc), vendors, suppliers and
potential technology partners.
»» Lead projects and/or people as part of project teams, working with marketing counterparts to
identify consumer/customer needs and translating these needs into technical specifications.
»» Works closely with packaging, process development, and manufacturing to identify technology
needs, working to then identify potential external solutions
»» Keep current in cutting edge chemistry and supplier opportunities to meet customer needs.
»» Responsible for safe working conditions (handles dangerous equipment and hazardous chemicals).
Is aware of hazards associated with work assigned, observes safe work practices, keeps equip-
ment neat, clean and in safe operating condition, and maintains good housekeeping standards.
»» Responsible for following all applicable Federal, State, and Local health, safety, and environmen-
tal regulations, as per corporate health, safety and environmental policies.
Qualifications and Experience:

»» Four year scientific degree or advanced degree is required. Relevant formulating experience in
consumer packaged goods will be taken into consideration. Experience in managing matters of
intellectual property, licensing, etc. a strong plus.
»» Strong communication skills are required, as the position involves working in multi-functional proj-
ect teams, with consumers and 3rd parties.
2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
BOSE
Manager — Innovation & Insights
Bose Corporation’s Automotive Systems Division (ASD), is seeking a talented Innovation and Insight
Manager to join our New Products Technology team. We are leading the innovation in the field of
automotive entertainment systems, and are successfully extended our market leadership in areas of
noise and sound control methods. In this role, you will support the Team Leader by taking responsi-
bility for managing sensing and analysis of competitor, market and technology trends. You will play
a key role within the existing ASD advanced product development process (PAC and ePAC) as well
as assemble consumer and OEM insight (voice of the customer) as well as employee (expert) idea,
as in input to the overall Strategic Product Planning process.
Responsibilities Include, But Not Limited To
»» Leads and manage planning activities for non-contracted/advanced development with ASD
R&D, is an active contributor to ePAC analysis and decision making.
»» Work closely with, and provides ASD input to Corp. R&D activities (with Corp. R&D liaison).
»» Analyze and evaluate new, relevant technologies with appropriate adjacency to existing Bose
technology and marketing capability for new ASD applications.
»» Maintain data on all competitors and performs analysis and tracking of competitive activity.
»» Provide insight on business opportunities and risks.
»» Performs/contracts tear-down and functional assessments of competitive products as needed.
Works closely with the Manager of Alliances and Partnerships to analyze opportunities with
outside partners.
»» Forecast technical direction within the automotive audio electronics market including hardware,
materials, software, connectivity, and interaction influences of other automotive systems.
»» Tracks activities, strategies and technologies of large, “Silicon Valley” companies and forecasts
their impact on the automotive sound-related business (connected vehicles, self-driving vehicles,
etc.).
»» Work with Strategic Marketing, Product Line Managers (PML) and Technical Sales Managers to
develop consumer and OEM customer insight into automotive audio experiences and solutions
to automotive sound-related problems.
Skills
»» Perform assessment of consumer and customer (OEM) “value propositions” with the objective of
clarifying and quantifying logical and emotional reasons for purchase. Communicates this infor-
mation to Category PLMs to ensure success of sales activities for new categories, components,
software, materials, etc.
»» Must have the following skills, abilities and knowledge:
2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
»» Progressive technical and business experience in the areas of product management, operations,
finance, strategic marketing, program management, technical sales or strategic planning.
»» Experience in automotive electronics, specifically audio or active noise reduction, is strongly
preferred.
»» Knowledge of other automotive subsystems including powertrain, body and interiors is desired.
»» International business experience and work with large, automotive OEMs is a plus.
»» Attention to detail, planning and organizational skills
»» Ability to work across business disciplines and functions with particular focus on products and
marketing
»» Strong business and customer orientation with emphasis on value propositions
»» Automotive OEM or Tier 1 supplier thinking and business case development
»» Long term strategic and integrative thinking with a global perspective
»» Strong brand management orientation and competence
»» Ability to travel up to 30%
2015
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HIRING INNOVATORS
STARBUCKS
Program Manager, Concept Innovation
The Program Manager, Concept Innovation will support a team to dedicated to driving break-
through innovations for Starbucks. S/he will serve as the innovation program and project planner,
and steward the innovation pipeline. The ideal candidate will be a seasoned PM with experience
managing projects in innovation from conceptualization through testing. This newly created position
will be the glue that holds the team together by creating pipeline management tools, communication
processes, resourcing, etc. As part of the small, nimble global innovation team, the program man-
ager will also be expected to serve as project manager as needed.
The Global Concept Innovation team is a newly created group chartered to push the envelope
of what is possible for both Starbucks and the retail/restaurant industry while acting in service
to the Starbucks mission: To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one
neighborhood at a time. The team works on a multitude of projects, both big and small, and often
concurrently.
Models and acts within Starbucks guiding principles.
Program management:
»» Provides project management for overall Store of the Future program, including complex sequenc-
ing of multiple projects
»» Monitors project execution to ensure key milestones are met
»» Oversees the conversion of “lab tested” solutions to actual in-store execution for further testing
»» Provides full visibility to the total innovation pipeline to senior leadership
»» Serves as technical project manager for complex engineering initiatives
»» Manages external contract resources as needed
Summary of Experience
»» Program, Project and Planning experience (8 years)
»» Building, leading and mentoring teams (8 years)
»» General business experience in large, matrixed organizations (8 years)
»» Managing complex large-scale business projects (4 years)
»» Working with end-users to define iterative testing, learning and implementation process (6 years)
2015
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Hiring Innovation

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HIRING INNOVATORS

How Innovation Teams Bring on Top Talent

GETTING THE BUDGET 4

DESCRIBING THE ROLE 6

WORKING WITH HR — AND DOING YOUR OWN MARKETING 8

CHART: BRINGING IN OUTSIDE TALENT — A PHASED APPROACH 13

SAMPLE JOB DESCRIPTIONS 15

Innovation Leader is an information service that serves corporate innovation ex-

2 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

3 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

Getting the budget

4 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

5 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

Describing the role

6 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

the right people,” she says.

7 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

Working with HR — and doing your

8 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

9 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

10 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

11 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

12 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

Bringing in Outside Talent: A Phased Approach

Phase I Phase II Phase III Phase IV Phase V

13 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

14 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

Sample job descriptions

15 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

Salary (Pay Basis)

16 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

17 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

18 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

VOYA FINANCIAL (FORMERLY ING DIRECT US)

Creates the digital vision and enterprise strategy

Desired Skills and Experience

19 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

20 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

DEL MONTE FOODS

Innovation and Strategy

21 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

22 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

23 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

24 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

Principal duties and responsibilities

25 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

26 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

27 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

JARDEN HOME BRANDS

28 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

Desired Skills and Experience

29 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

LOWE’S INNOVATION LABS

30 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

STANLEY BLACK & DECKER

31 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

32 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

ILLINOIS TOOL WORKS

DESIRED EXPERIENCE AND TRAITS:

33 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

»» Public Speaking & Facilitation skills

34 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

35 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

* Willingness to travel to Sonos locations.