Head of Innovation & VC Partnerships

Selective Insurance; Short Hills (NJ); On-site; USD 130,000 - 168,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Total rewards package

Benefits package

Paid time off

Job summary

Selective Insurance is seeking a senior innovation leader to guide the innovation lifecycle, drive InsurTech partnerships, and oversee a cross-functional team in a dynamic, enterprise-wide program. You will champion client validation, co-create with external partners, and ensure alignment with strategic priorities across the organization.

The role emphasizes building scalable concepts, communicating program status, and mentoring colleagues in innovation methodologies, with a strong focus on

Qualifications

• Anticipate and respond to customer expectations and needs.
• Advanced analytical skills, including ability to identify structure and assess key issues involved in validating specific strategic opportunities.
• Business consulting, corporate development, branding, or innovation required including experience developing new products, services, and solutions to business problems.
• Leading proof-of-concept solutions with a focus on client validation to ensure the proposed solutions meet customer requirements.
• Teamwork and cross-functional leadership skills.
• Excellent communication skills, including ability to synthesize clear insights and recommendations, and in developing clear, logical business cases and presentations to internal and external stakeholders.
• Ability to onboard and manage innovation-related partnerships.
• Ability to think strategically with supporting analytical and critical thinking skills, including the ability to deal with ambiguity.
• Ability to grow and scale the business across strategy, operations, business development, partnerships and/or product.

Responsibilities

• Closely align with the strategic research and insights function. Provide continuous feedback to the research function and actively leverage and communicate insights to continuously source new concepts into the innovation lifecycle.
• Lead strategic efforts related to InsurTech-focused VC partners by engaging with potential vendor partnerships in areas of key strategic priority, evaluating and presenting to business partners of VC partner recommended relationships, and others on an ad hoc basis.
• Direct organic and inorganic innovation activities, ensuring a transparent innovation pipeline, aligned with key strategic priority areas, and direct initiatives through the plan, explore, deploy, and scale phases of the innovation lifecycle.
• Lead ongoing collaboration with business partners to identify innovative use cases based on key business priorities. Ensure the pipeline is visible and available for anyone in the organization to view and understand on what basis solutions are being rank ordered.
• Consistently communicate innovation program status and outcomes. Work within established company frameworks (e.g. EPMO, Product Model), to ensure adequate exposure for and progress within each innovation program.
• Partner with external parties, where appropriate, to engage in co-creation innovation efforts.
• Drive innovation to all parts of the organization. Oversee the leadership of the dedicated group of individuals, training the group on methodologies for innovation, and holding the group accountable for generating and advancing innovative concepts.

Skills

Analytical skills

Strategic thinking

Cross-functional leadership

Communication skills

Customer-focused

Partner management

Problem solving

Education

College degree

Tools

Prototyping tools

Job description

Selective Insurance is seeking a senior innovation leader to guide the innovation lifecycle, drive InsurTech partnerships, and oversee a cross-functional team in a dynamic, enterprise-wide program. You will champion client validation, co-create with external partners, and ensure alignment with strategic priorities across the organization.

The role emphasizes building scalable concepts, communicating program status, and mentoring colleagues in innovation methodologies, with a strong focus on