Innovation Consultant

The Innovation Consultant is a delivery-focused, commercially minded role within Catalysts Open Innovation team, responsible for designing and delivering bespoke innovation engagements with private sector clients.

Acting as a trusted partner, the consultant will identify opportunities, lead discovery, facilitate workshops, shape strategic proposals and guide clients through their innovation journey, from scoping to implementation. A key part of this role is facilitating inclusive innovation through grand challenges, enabling diverse stakeholders to collaborate on complex problems and co-create impactful solutions. This role blends elements of consulting, stakeholder engagement, and business development, with a strong emphasis on generating actionable insights, driving measurable impact, and building collaborative networks.

About Catalyst:

We are a non-profit organisation that supports science and technology innovation in Northern Ireland with buildings and hubs in Belfast and Derry/Londonderry where companies can use our flexible workspaces to operate from. We use the profits generated from our property portfolio to deliver entrepreneurial support programmes, facilitate funding, inform policy and accelerate technology-based research and development, by linking with academia and government.

Key Responsibilities:

Business Development:

• Identify and scope the market to drive revenue generated opportunities
• Support growth of CRM pipeline, converting conversations into high-impact engagements
• Nurture relationships across SMEs and larger corporates with professionalism and strategic focus

Proposal Development:

• Lead or support proposal writing, solution scoping and pricing of stakeholder engagements
• Collaborate with internal Catalyst teams to cost, package and structure bespoke interventions
• Shape engagement plans from initial scoping through to delivery handover

  Client Delivery:

  • Develop and lead the delivery of Open Innovation workshops with external clients
  • Apply Catalysts Open Innovation methodology to assess innovation readiness and develop tailored pathways
  • Facilitate stakeholder engagements with clarity and empathy

  Insight Capture & Strategic Analysis:

  • Capture and synthesise insights from discovery sessions, interviews, and workshops
  • Analyse qualitative and quantitative data to inform innovation roadmaps and strategic recommendations
  • Translate insights into clear, actionable outcomes for clients

  Impact Measurement & Reporting:

  • Track progress of interventions against intended innovation outcomes
  • Support clients to define and measure innovation success
  • Contribute to Catalysts internal reporting on delivery outcomes and ecosystem impact

  Innovation Strategy:

  • Provide commercial insight and challenge to shape client innovation strategies
  • Help clients build internal capability and cultures that support sustained innovation
  • Collaborate with partners and internal teams to curate bespoke innovation journeys
  • Share learnings, frameworks and insights to strengthen our collective delivery
  • Act as a connector within Catalysts wider innovation ecosystem

  Take on any additional reasonable responsibilities as required within the scope of this role.

  • Strong track record of delivering consulting services into the private sector
  • Demonstrable experience facilitating workshops and innovation-focused engagements
  • Commercially astute with experience in business development, proposal writing or account growth
  • Excellent verbal and written communication skills able to engage across all levels of an organisation
  • Comfortable managing client CRM pipelines and scoping opportunities with minimal supervision
  • Proactive, adaptable, and delivery-focused thrives in ambiguity and brings structure to complexity
  • Strategic mindset with strong operational focus leading both vision-setting and delivery.
  • Experience delivering innovation services to the public sector
  • Familiarity with open innovation principles and cross-sector collaborative R&D models
  • Networked within Northern Irelands innovation or enterprise ecosystem