Lead Corporate Innovation Europe

Ovation; Luik; Hybrid; EUR 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Ovation seeks a hybrid professional to own and grow its Corporate Innovation business across Europe. You will engage executives, diagnose strategic needs, design tailored innovation programmes, and deliver impactful engagements in a client-centric, hands-on way.

Regular client site work in Belgium and Europe helps strengthen Ovation's market position. You will unite business, consulting and innovation to turn opportunities into programs, leveraging network and entrepreneurial methods to scale

Qualifications

• Proven B2B business development: network building, opportunity spotting, account development, turning a need into a proposal.
• Roots in the European innovation ecosystem, with a strong network in Wallonia and Brussels (incubators, accelerators, VC).
• Consulting and diagnostic skills: understanding and challenging a client's issues before proposing a solution.
• Excellent facilitation and client relationship skills, including with senior stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain a qualified network, particularly at executive level.
• Prospect with a consulting mindset: understand the problem before proposing a solution, and turn conversations into business opportunities.
• Write and pitch proposals, defend an approach and a budget, and grow your client portfolio.
• Deeply understand the client's current business and the real reasons behind their need to diversify: competitive threat, anticipation, societal pressure.
• Turn client challenges into tailored innovation strategies and programmes.
• Lead engagements in front of the client, facilitate key moments and mobilise stakeholders at every level.
• Evolve our offers based on client needs, lessons learned and market trends.

Skills

B2B business development

Executive-level facilitation

Network building

Consulting and diagnostic

Education

University degree

Job description

We have the expertise, a brand, proven methods and our first references. We are now looking for the person who will take ownership of growing Ovation's Corporate Innovation business, especially across Europe: opening doors, understanding our clients' challenges, turning opportunities into engagements, and delivering what you sell.

The context

SMEs and large companies run on stable processes and value risk-controlled decision-making. Yet the world is changing. Whether their core business is under threat, or they are highly profitable but pushed by society and the market to reinvent themselves, they have a vital need to innovate and diversify.

Ovation helps them take a bolder approach, inspired by entrepreneurial methods and venture capital. We use entrepreneurship and innovation methods to help companies explore new opportunities, surface and test solutions, build internal capabilities and structure their innovation efforts.

Innovation strategy, intrapreneurship and corporate startups, innovation portfolio management, open innovation, hackathons, ideation and awareness-building: our work adapts to the challenges and maturity of each organisation.

Your responsibilities

Business development and client portfolio

• Build and maintain a qualified network, particularly at executive level.
• Prospect with a consulting mindset: understand the problem before proposing a solution, and turn conversations into business opportunities.
• Write and pitch proposals, defend an approach and a budget, and grow your client portfolio.

Strategic diagnosis

• Deeply understand the client's current business and the real reasons behind their need to diversify: competitive threat, anticipation, societal pressure.
• Engage at the highest level (CEO, executive committee, Head of Strategy, Transformation Director) to secure and verify leadership's genuine commitment, a condition for these projects to succeed.
• Understand how large organisations work internally, identify the real need behind the request and recommend the most relevant approach.

Designing offers and programmes

• Turn client challenges into tailored innovation strategies and programmes.
• Design engagements: innovation strategy, intrapreneurship, corporate startups, open innovation, portfolio management, innovation challenges, hackathons, ideation, awareness-building.
• Structure each engagement: methodology, journey, deliverables, expected outcomes, indicators and budget.
• Come up with new formats to match each client's needs and maturity.

Delivery

• Lead engagements in front of the client, facilitate key moments and mobilise stakeholders at every level.
• Ensure a high-quality experience and deliverables by running complex projects with rigour.

Growing Ovation's Corporate offer

• Evolve our offers based on client needs, lessons learned and market trends.
• Capture and structure the methods, tools, references and learnings from each engagement.
• Develop new approaches to strengthen Ovation's Corporate Innovation positioning.
• Make the business more visible, distinctive and easy to roll out across Europe.

Who we're looking for

A hybrid profile, at the crossroads of business, consulting and innovation. You can build a commercial relationship without being a pure salesperson. You enjoy understanding organisations, solving complex problems, designing programmes and bringing them to life on the ground. You are credible in front of an executive committee in the morning, and you facilitate an ideation workshop with a team of technicians in the afternoon.

• One foot in the corporate world: you understand the realities and constraints of large organisations.
• One foot in entrepreneurship: ideally experience as a (co-)founder, or real practice of entrepreneurial and innovation methods.
• One foot in coaching: a business-coach posture that challenges teams and helps them grow.

Skills we expect

• Proven B2B business development: network building, opportunity spotting, account development, turning a need into a proposal.
• Roots in the European innovation ecosystem, with a strong network in Wallonia and Brussels (incubators, accelerators, VC).
• Consulting and diagnostic skills: understanding and challenging a client's issues before proposing a solution.
• Excellent facilitation and client relationship skills, including with senior stakeholders.
• Designing support programmes, from the initial challenge to the programme, expected outcomes and budget, with the rigour of an excellent project manager.
• Curiosity for corporate innovation: Design Thinking, Lean Startup, Business Model Innovation, intrapreneurship, open innovation, corporate venturing.
• Excellent written and spoken communication in French and English.
• Good grasp of emerging technologies, especially AI and digital.
• Autonomy, business orientation, intellectual curiosity and structured creativity.
• University degree: management, business development, entrepreneurship, engineering or equivalent.

Place of work

The role involves regular presence at our clients' sites and in our offices with the Ovation team, in Alleur (province of Liège, Belgium). French is required for most of our clients.