Innovation Systems Design Leader

Supporting the businesses intended for the planned specialty products division of the intended merger between Dow and DuPont, the Emerging Innovation team drives growth and value creation by developing transformational business opportunities throughout the company. We work hand-in-hand with the businesses to (1) identify emerging innovation opportunities, (2) rapidly reduce critical uncertainties, (3) develop and incubate the most promising projects. We help build, sustain, and realize a strong innovation portfolio.

Emerging Innovation is seeking a Systems Designer to be the architect of processes for early-stage and transformational innovation. The Systems Designer will play a critical role in the company’s innovation-based growth by establishing, maintaining, and improving the methods, tools, and processes available to innovators throughout the company.

Responsibilities

The Systems Designer is primarily responsible for designing and deploying industry leading innovation practices. This includes conducting research on innovation processes, evaluating software tools and resources (idea management systems, decision making tools, open innovation systems, 3rd party vendors/consultants, etc.), modeling opportunity flow, and creating appropriate portfolio views to enable rapid decision making to advance opportunities.

The Systems Designer will support innovation teams and initiatives across the company by creating a shared awareness of successful processes and practices, and facilitating deployment in collaboration with innovation leaders. In addition to being the in-house expert on best practices for early stage innovation, the Systems Designer will be responsible for networking with internal innovation groups and the external innovation community to share knowledge and create synergies company-wide. The Systems Designer will also support discovery and incubation projects in a project management capacity.

To fulfill these responsibilities, the Systems Designer will be expected to:

• Experiment with and evaluate new approaches, tools, internal and external resources, and new ways of discovering and advancing opportunities.
• Network with and support innovation leaders in the adoption of the ‘next’ practices for innovation.
• Engage with the external innovation community by attending and presenting at conferences, engaging with industry peers and thought leaders, and collaborating on innovation topics.
• Facilitate adoption and advancement of innovation systems within Emerging Innovation and across the company by understanding the goals, needs, and challenges of innovation leaders.
• Determine and establish resources needed for successful adoption including training and facilitation.
• Create and maintain documentation on innovation practices, methods and tools.
• Design dashboards to allow for effective innovation management.
• Implement software deployments related to innovation management.
• Construct system models for opportunity understanding, evaluation, and advancement.

  Key measures of success for the Systems Designer include the establishment of the innovation systems infrastructure, successful opportunity flow through Emerging Innovation, attainment of high quality opportunities through discovery and incubation, and successful support of innovation teams across the company.

Job Qualifications
Qualifications

• Experience in designing, implementing, and managing corporate innovation processes, preferably in Fortune 1000 firms or innovation focused management consulting experience.
• Track record of thought leadership in the innovation space and engaging with the innovation community.
• Bachelor’s degree in science or engineering field.
• MBA preferred.
• Ability to travel up to 25%.

Proficiencies and Skills

The candidate for Systems Designer must be well versed in corporate innovation philosophy, processes, and tools. They will be adept at moving between strategy and execution while understanding the critical role of culture in successful innovation. The candidate must have a customer-centric and people-centered-design mindset. While familiarity with software systems, idea management systems, and open-innovation platforms is required, an experimental mindset, and openness to new approaches is essential. The candidate must also be skilled at data analysis, systems modeling, score-carding, and KPI visualization techniques. They must be comfortable with leading change and continuous improvement in support of company growth objectives.