Chief Innovation Officer (E5918) (Information Technology)
Job Summary
The role of the Chief Innovation Officer is to empower and guide the company through discovering and pursuing innovative ideas. The Chief Innovation Officer will find ways to [a] improve the rate at which high-potential new opportunities are spotted, [b] identify the most promising of these opportunities and validate them, [c] drive alignment among the leaders of the organization to make the right investments to pursue these opportunities further and [d] Partner with the Chief Information Digital Officer to eventually bring new products and services to market.
The CINO is responsible for developing the overall strategy, framework, and culture for innovation. This role will work in a federated model to collect and enable ideas from various organizations throughout the company and drive them through a defined process that identifies those that result in true business value.
This role will involve significant interaction with leadership, volunteers, and members. They must be comfortable collaborating and influencing all levels of the organization in Innovation principles and culture.
The ideal candidate will have created and led business innovation in a federated model. They will have experience creating an environment and culture of innovation using large volumes of data and diverse user communities. This individual will be able to articulate an approach for establishing an innovation framework of processes, tools, and methods.
The role will report to the Chief Information and Digital Officer and be a member of the CIDO's leadership team. They will have a strong partnership with the Chief Data Officer and Chief Technology Officer to ensure we have the necessary data and environment to support innovation.
Key Responsibilities
- Enable and empower innovation:
- This leader needs to ensure the business environment encourages the generation and circulation of ideas, promotes experimentation and collaboration, and welcomes (certain types of) failures as the means of learning and continuous improvement. This innovation-friendly environment requires skills, culture, processes, resources, and tools. The Chief Innovation Officer is accountable for onboarding the right innovation talents, shaping the innovation culture, designing and optimizing the right processes, and providing the technology to make innovation faster and more effective.
- Establish an effective opportunity discovery process:
- The Chief Innovation Officer must introduce and establish an end-to-end innovation process that helps the innovation team and the organization identify and validate opportunities faster. The CINO must find ways to clearly set the right focus for innovation (i.e., identify problems worth solving in alignment with the strategy of the organization), enable ideation (idea generation, sharing, collaboration), streamline experimentation and validation (the tools, teams, and processes that help test, de-risk, validate ideas fast and inexpensively.)
- Set the right culture of innovation:
- At the cultural level, the Chief Innovation Officer must find ways – programs, events, innovation initiatives, etc. - to foster a genuine Culture of Innovation. This special culture is built on top of a growth and learning mindset combined with openness, safety (to experiment with ideas), and the readiness to take calculated risks, for a definition and detailed presentation of the Culture of Innovation, see here. The Chief Innovation Officer must be an inspiring figure, attracting interest in the Innovation Process and leading by example – acting themselves as innovators.
- Introduce the right methods and technologies:
- The Chief Innovation Officer must be able to introduce the appropriate innovation tools and resources that empower teams to innovate faster and more effectively. These tools may include an Innovation Management Platform or Idea Management, along with collaboration systems, prototyping tools, templates, gamification tools, and more.
- Maintain a healthy Innovation Opportunity Portfolio:
- The CINO must effectively prioritize and wisely invest in developing new ideas and shaping R&D projects. To do so, the Chief Innovation Officer must design a solid intake process (for opportunities and potential projects) and a smart project assessment model to allow good prioritization and a balanced Innovation Portfolio (both from a risk and potential value perspective).
- Measure Innovation Performance:
- The Chief Innovation Officer must design and use the appropriate Innovation Performance Measurement system, using it both to steer the process (in a continual improvement fashion) and to communicate the organization's ‘State of Innovation' to the leadership.
- Partner with the Technology Team:
- Work closely with the technology department to identify digital solutions to meet the innovation ideas harvested from the organization. Provide direction and guidance on key business requirements for technology to design solutions around. The CINO will filter business innovation requests to ensure they meet the defined guidelines for return on investment/business value.
- 25% Domestic and International
- Must have good analytical problem-solving and communication skills; Working knowledge of Agile and Product delivery is required.
- Excellent executive communication and presentation skills
- Ability to effectively work as part of a team or independently
- Must possess a professional and positive approach
- Must be self-motivated, able to produce with minimal supervision
- Foster positive change through new behaviors and a high level of collaboration
- Strong knowledge of digital technologies
- Prototyping tools and methods
- Master's or other advanced degree or other related technical degrees or equivalent experience; Req
- 10-15 years Leading organizations through large transformation efforts Req
- 4-7 years of demonstrable experience in innovation with technology, design thinking, and other similar disciplines Req
- 4-7 years of demonstrable experience in interacting with Executive Leadership and managing in a matrixed organization Req
- Certification in Design Thinking or Innovation Pref
As defined in IEEE Policies, individuals currently serving on an IEEE board or committee are not eligible to apply.
PLEASE NOTE: This position is not budgeted for employer-sponsored immigration support, this includes all persons in F (both CPT and OPT), J, H, L, or O status.
For information on work demands and conditions required for this position, please consult the reference document, ADA Requirements. This position is classified under Category II – Mobile Positions.
All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.
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Disclaimer: This job description is proprietary to IEEE. It outlines the general nature and key features performed by various positions that share the same job classification. It is not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties and qualifications required of all employees assigned to the job. Nothing in this job description restricts management's right to assign or re-assign duties to this job at any time due to reasonable accommodations or other business reasons.
