Vice President Innovation

Alpha Executive Search; Illinois; On-site; USD 180,000 - 320,000; Full time

Job summary

Alpha Executive Search seeks a Vice President of Innovation to lead Consumer Insights, Culinary and R&D for its North America food manufacturing organization. You will drive insights-driven product development, manage an R&D portfolio, and sit on the North American Leadership Team.

The role requires 10+ years in food/beverage innovation, strong leadership, and the ability to forge strategic partnerships across diverse stakeholders.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in food or beverage, preferably in innovation.
• Strong background in leading program innovation and product development.
• Experience building consumer insights departments and aggregating market insights.
• Experience leveraging technology, social media and digital marketing trends.
• Proven ability to build productive relationships within a large organization and with external stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead a cross-functional team with hiring and performance management authority.
• Drive consumer insights into culinary and product development strategies.
• Build advisory council of internal and external health and food industry experts; organize events.
• Lead strategic ideation sessions with stakeholders to identify transformational opportunities.
• Coach teams to solve challenges using practical and innovative approaches.
• Monitor innovation across the network and scale successful programs.

Skills

Leadership

Product development

Consumer insights

Digital marketing tools

Stakeholder management

Education

MBA / MA/MS

Job description

Vice President - Innovation leads the company’s Consumer Insights, Culinary and Research and Development– for our North America food manufacturing organization that includes 13 manufacturing facilities, 5,000+ team members and a variety of fully cooked food solutions to foodservice and retail channels. Succeeding in this role requires experience developing consumer insights into customer relevant culinary and product development, product category management that expands current capabilities across multiple customer and channel types and effectively managing R&D resources and pipelines. This position will be a key revenue growth driver and sit on the North American Leadership Team.

Responsibilities

• Job manages a team, has authority to hire and performance-manage the team.
• Job leads/supervises/manages 1-5 employees.
• Works cross-functionally with the business development/sales team and direct with customers to understand market opportunities and prioritize product development activities.
• Build a consumer insights and product category management team.
• Create processes and capability to develop consumer insights and screen culinary and product development.
• Establish strong cross-functional product development teams and actively stay on top of priorities, progress, challenges, opportunities, and contingencies to help them keep moving forward.
• Be a vocal advocate for innovation, world class product quality/reliability, and custom food solutions.
• Create and manage an advisory council of internal (network) and external health and food industry experts and design events to infuse fresh and innovative thinking and ideas across the network.
• Lead the development of strategic ideation sessions with internal, network and external stakeholders for the purpose of cultivating strategic relationships and identifying transformational innovation opportunities and breakthrough ideas to advance our strategic priorities.
• Guide and coach teams to properly define the challenge or opportunity they are using the innovation process to solve for. Push teams to use a blend of practical solutions but also expansive and non-conventional thinking to generate a broad set of ideas and possibilities.
• Monitor and evaluate innovation happening throughout our network for the dual purpose of sharing promising practices and scaling what works.
• Develop high-impact strategic partnerships to participate in project development and take food programs to scale.
• Establish performance measures and create and oversee the process to evaluate, qualify, manage and develop new ideas, including rapid prototyping and testing of new solutions, where needed.
• This role has the responsibility to understand and places in practice appropriate safety procedures. This responsibility is achieved through education, training, use of protective equipment (as applicable) and by following safety policies, regulations, standards, and laws.
• Engage with business development team and customers to effectively position culinary, development and innovation concepts while capturing the “Voice of the Customer.”

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in related field is preferred. In the Food or Beverage field.
• A strong background in leading program innovation and/or product or solution development including the ability to shape expansive thinking that is also practical and executable, resulting in successful design, testing and launch of food solutions.
• A strong background developing a consumer insights department to generate and aggregate relevant consumer and market insights.
• Experience leveraging technology to advance innovation and enable implementation of key strategies, with a working knowledge of and experience with social media and digital marketing tools and trends.
• Demonstrated track record creating productive working relationships within a large, complex organization, or diverse stakeholder groups. Ability to build respect and trust with diverse internal and external stakeholders and lead through influence and collaboration.

Preferred Skills

• MA/MS/MBA or equivalent is preferred. In Food Science, Chemistry, Business, Management, or related field.