Innovation Manager

Warwick

6 Month contract (possible extension)

£ Per Day via Umbrella

About the Role

The organisation includes new business creation, startup investing, business development and culture acceleration programs, all of which combine to create strategic and financial value for Grid and its customers while helping build an entrepreneurial culture within Grid.

This role is specifically designed to strategise, ideate, setup, track and support the delivery of a disruptive innovation program across the business. This will include staying up to date with changes in the energy, technology and entrepreneurship landscapes, developing innovation strategies and initiatives to address our decarbonisation ambition and delivering on them. Your key stakeholders will be the business units as well as the innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem.

You will lead the development of new initiatives from the very beginning of problem identification, ideation and customer discovery through business model validation. The activities will be truly entrepreneurial ranging from strategic work at the early stage by generating a pipeline of projects, to customer validation and job-to-be-done interviews, to developing financial business propositions, novel technical solutions and compelling pitches to the investor and start-up community.

To be successful in this role, you should be able to demonstrate how you can explain complex, novel ideas in a simple form to all levels within an organisation as well as venture capitalists.

Key Responsibilities

  • Maintain a close watch on developments in technology & business models and their application within the context of climate change and the evolving global economic, political, research and energy environments.
  • Carry out blue sky thinking and develop an understanding of how macro trends impact innovation and technological evolution.
  • Ideate, develop and implement novel technology innovations and business models that drive value to the business.
  • Develop and maintain an innovation portfolio focusing on horizon 3 for the businesses.
  • Engage with customers, employees and other stakeholders actively throughout the process conducting customer-discovery interviews and using a series of prototypes to learn, test and refine concepts.
  • Work with internal teams on proper handoff and operationalisation of innovation initiatives.
  • Required skills and experience

  • Exhibit inspirational leadership, commercial, entrepreneurial, problem solving and creative skills.
  • Good understanding of the UK energy ecosystem and trends.
  • Strong understanding of and experience in innovation best practices
  • Passionate about creating an exceptional customer experience
  • Proven record in practising flexibility, opportunism, and adaptability
  • Experience in building strong working relationships across a diverse stakeholder base.
  • Excellent communication skills (written and verbal) that can transcend many levels of the organisation.
  • Candidates will ideally show evidence of the above in their CV in order to be considered.

    Please be advised if you haven’t heard from us within 48 hours then unfortunately your application has not been successful on this occasion, we may however keep your details on file for any suitable future vacancies and contact you accordingly.

    Pontoon is an employment consultancy and operates as an equal opportunities employer.