Innovation Manager

itsme; Brussel; Hybrid; EUR 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Brussels Office near Central Station

Remote work 3 days/week

Indefinite contract

Competitive compensation

Job summary

itsme is expanding its digital identity leadership in Belgium and Europe. We seek an Innovation Manager to sense external signals and partner with Product Management to explore adjacent value propositions and qualify bets worth pursuing.

You will work with an Innovation Architect and a Service Designer to cover ecosystem, tech and design angles, while aligning with Revenue, partners and customers throughout the process.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in innovation management, venture building, strategy or product roles under real market uncertainty.
• Hypothesis-driven; comfortable being wrong in public to learn quickly.
• Ability to assess market potential and right-to-win with strategic fit.

Responsibilities

• Monitor market and regulatory trends to calibrate strategic themes.
• Build domain knowledge and insights for the organization to reuse.
• Own exploration funnel for strategic themes and qualify bets.
• Scout adjacent value propositions with Product Management and qualify bets.
• Build business cases on market potential and right-to-win with customer validation.
• Collaborate with Innovation Architect and Service Designer across bets.
• Iterate or kill bets based on validation outcomes and document decisions.
• Package propositions for the Innovation Committee and align with Product early.

Skills

Innovation management

Strategy

Venture building

Job description

itsme® has fundamentally changed how people lead their digital lives in Belgium, but we are not stopping there! Do you want to be a driving force to help expand on this success story as part of a talented team that is making a positive impact on society? Then keep on reading, you’ll probably like what you’ll see.

We are itsme®, one of Europe’s fastest-growing scale-ups, with 150 team members and growing. Our mission: to provide a state-of-the-art digital identity solution for all people, enabling them to interact securely in the digital space. Now, only nine years after being founded, close to 8 million citizens use the itsme® app to identify themselves and sign documents online. Starting in Belgium, we successfully launched the itsme app in 32 European countries, with the ambition of becoming an internationally leading player.

We're looking for an Innovation Manager to run point on two connected mandates: sensing the outside world to keep our strategic themes calibrated, and partnering with Product Management to explore adjacent value propositions and qualify the bets worth pursuing.

What your job looks like

• Keep an outward-looking view through market and regulatory monitoring, conferences and expert communities, turning it into a standing point of view on whether our strategic themes still reflect the right playing field.
• Build a pragmatic, evolving base of domain knowledge on your theme, cross-referenced with Revenue's sector intelligence, into insights the wider organisation can reuse.
• Own the exploration funnel for your strategic theme: identify, frame and qualify potential bets before they compete for delivery capacity.
• Team up with Product Managers to scout adjacent value propositions around existing product areas, and jointly qualify which ones deserve a bet.
• Build the case for each bet on two lenses, market potential and right-to-win, and validate it as effectively as possible through customer conversations, prototypes and PoCs rather than desk research alone.
• Partner closely with an Innovation Architect and a Service Designer on every bet to cover the ecosystem, tech and design angles, while co-defining the value proposition with Product, Revenue, partners and customers.
• Iterate or kill bets based on what validation actually shows, with the discipline to document why weak ones stop.
• Package qualified propositions for the Innovation Committee and refine them with Product Management early, bringing the right counterparts in from the start.

• You have at least 5 years of experience in innovation management, venture building, strategy or product roles under real market uncertainty.
• You're hypothesis-driven and comfortable being wrong in public — you'd rather learn a bet doesn't work in six weeks than in eighteen months.
• You know how to assess market potential and right-to-win: sizing an opportunity, reading competitive positioning, and judging fit with our capabilities and strategy.
• You combine a commercially grounded mindset with design-led thinking, and enough technical fluency to work credibly with architects and other tech-oriented profiles.
• You build genuine working relationships across internal and external stakeholders, and know when to bring sceptical people in early rather than convince them after the fact.
• You can run structured discovery and validation supported by service design (customer research, experimentation, lean methodologies) and turn messy signals into a clear recommendation.
• Prior exposure to digital identity and signing (e.g. eIDAS, QES, EUDI Wallet) is a strong plus, though not a hard requirement.
• Languages: Full proficiency in English and native in Dutch or French.

What we offer

• Being welcomed by an informal, enthusiastic, and ambitious team that is revolutionising how we safely manage our digital identity, in Belgium & beyond.
• Offices within walking distance from Brussels Central Station, with the possibility to work remotely 3 days a week.
• A contract of indefinite duration, with an attractive compensation package.
• An environment where we care a lot about our core values:
  • Impact: Lead by example and create positive influence.
  • Resourcefulness: Connect, mobilise, and collaborate across ecosystems.
  • Curiosity: Explore, learn, and challenge the status quo.
  • Scale: Build strong foundations for sustainable growth.
  • Humble: Respect, listen, and embrace feedback for growth.