Senior Innovation Manager

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Vacancy Name Senior Innovation Manager
Employment Type Permanent
Country United Kingdom
Location Liverpool
Business Area Commercial
Workplace Type Hybrid

About Princes The Princes Group has over 7,000 employees with offices and production sites in the UK, Netherlands, Italy, Poland, France and Mauritius. Princes manufactures 350 different food and drink products responsibly sourced and enjoyed by consumers every day.

Role Description Princes\’ Innovation team exists to drive long-term profitable business growth by developing sustainable and relevant products for consumers and for our key customers, including both creation of new products and evolution of existing products.

This role will be responsible for profitable growth through Innovation – encompassing product change on products across both Brand and COB.

Dimensions:

• Responsible for developing and owning the strategic innovation growth pillar and pipeline for next 3-5 years, to deliver the business strategy and financial goals
• Ideation, development, testing and review of innovation concepts
• Engagement and co-ordination across teams of colleagues and communication with stakeholders at all levels
• Energising and building strong relationships with key teams across the business in UK and beyond, so that they are inspired and motivated to deliver successfully against our key innovation projects
• Management of projects with key agencies and suppliers
• Control an annual innovation budget.
• Strong cross functional collaboration, working closely with CS&P as well as Innovation PMO and Product & Packaging Development teams

Principal Responsibilities:

• Implement a long-term product innovation plan in key sectors, aligned with total Group strategy and our brand /sector strategies.
• Unlock growth opportunities, prioritise concepts against manufacturing capability and commercial criteria for Brand and COB, and write briefs for product/pack development (or co-write with brand team)
• Pipeline development – Work with stakeholders and team to develop long-list of ideas and prioritise into winning concepts that support a short and mid-term balanced portfolio of opportunities across Brand and COB.
• Ensure sufficiency at front end to deliver ‘funnel, not tunnel’.
• Cross-functional engagement, through the stage-gate process
• Break down cross-functional barriers to delivery of innovation ambition at speed
• Inspire other teams in Innovation and Commercial functions, and broader stakeholder groups, around the vision and innovation pipeline
• Establish the credibility of the team across the business up to senior level

Role Requirements

Knowledge, Skills & Experience:

• Experience of working in a high performing team.
• Graduate or equivalent level of experience.
• Possess a real passion and broad interest across food and drink topics.
• Be commercially literate and motivated
• Be hungry for success at pace
• Have demonstrable experience within a manufacturing innovation / NPD / Marketing environment, having successfully brought Innovation from concept to market.
• Be able to lead ideation sessions and prioritise and progress outputs.
• Have strong analytical skills, comfortable reading, identifying and summarising actionable insights from all forms of market and research data.
• Be brand and design literate, licensed brand and own brand experience would be advantageous.
• Have experience of agency selection, briefing and management.
• Have experience of working with or managing an NPD process.
• Be a self starter and self motivator.
• Be comfortable managing a broad number of stakeholder relationships and leading cross functional teams.
• Have demonstrable planning and organisation skills.
• Be creative, have strong communication skills (written, verbal and presentation).
• Ability to coach and develop team members.
• Credibility across the business, up to a senior level, in order to change views.
• Ability to build relationships across multiple functions up to a senior level.
• Have developed IT skills across MS office, corporate and marketing information systems

Personal Attributes:

• Drive, energy, passion, output/ results-oriented
• Grit, resilience, self-starter
• Stakeholder management
• Consumer intuition
• Curiosity, optimism, sense of possibilities/ imaginative
• Commercial savvy
• Strong verbal and written comms
• Bright, street smart
• Comfort with ambiguity, while bringing structure to help navigate

Benefits:

• Cash car allowance
• 25 days annual leave plus your birthday off
• 14.5% pension – 5% employee opt in / 9.5% employer
• Hybrid and flexible working – 4 days in office / 1 day WFH
• Flexible holiday option – buy 5 additional days
• Enhanced family friendly & carers policies
• Life assurance cover
• Private medical insurance
• Critical illness cover
• Learning and development opportunities