Director, Innovation

Work Schedule

Environmental Conditions

Job Description

The Innovation Director is responsible for driving innovation across a significant business landscape, concentration area, or horizontal capability, shaping and advancing a portfolio of high-impact opportunities aligned to strategic business priorities. This role provides senior leadership across innovation activities, ensuring opportunities are translated into clear value propositions, supported by robust evidence, and positioned to deliver meaningful operational, commercial, and customer impact.

Working closely with senior leaders across business, digital, data, technology, and operational teams, the Innovation Director guides the progression of opportunities from early exploration through validation and transition into implementation. The role acts as a primary senior interface between innovation and downstream execution teams, ensuring continuity of strategic intent and value realization while maintaining focus on opportunity shaping, experimentation, and investment decision support rather than delivery execution.

The role also plays a key part in shaping and communicating the organization’s innovation narrative, ensuring a clear and compelling representation of innovation priorities, progress, and impact across internal and external audiences.

This position combines strategic leadership, portfolio oversight, stakeholder influence, innovation expertise, and enterprise storytelling to strengthen innovation capability and accelerate transformational outcomes across the organization.

Responsibilities

• Drive innovation across a significant landscape, concentration area, or horizontal capability, translating strategic priorities into clear direction, focus, and measurable outcomes.
• Own and oversee a portfolio of innovation opportunities, ensuring coherence, prioritisation, and alignment to strategic and commercial objectives.
• Lead identification, shaping, prioritisation, and progression of opportunities, ensuring sustained focus on the highest-value initiatives.
• Maintain continuity of value propositions across the portfolio from early exploration through validation, transition, and adoption.
• Partner closely with business, digital, data, technology, and delivery leaders to align priorities, shape opportunities, and support effective progression into implementation.
• Act as the primary senior interface between innovation and downstream execution teams, ensuring propositions are carried forward without loss of strategic intent.
• Guide portfolio prioritisation and investment trade-offs, balancing emerging opportunity development with scaling of validated concepts.
• Ensure opportunities are supported by robust evidence, clear assumptions, and well-defined value propositions to inform investment decisions.
• Contribute to governance, portfolio reviews, and investment decision-making activities across the innovation landscape.
• Serve as a key counterpart to senior leaders across business, product, digital, data, and technology functions to shape innovation direction from people, process, and technology perspectives.
• Support and influence long-term strategic planning activities within the assigned remit, contributing to future innovation priorities and capability direction.
• Identify patterns, dependencies, risks, and emerging opportunities that inform broader portfolio and enterprise innovation decisions.
• Oversee the development and communication of the enterprise innovation story, ensuring a clear, consistent, and compelling narrative across internal stakeholders, clients, partners, and external industry audiences.
• Partner with commercial, strategy, and communications teams to position innovation capabilities, thought leadership, and strategic initiatives effectively in the market.
• Represent the organization internally and externally as a recognized innovation leader, contributing to strategic discussions, industry engagement, client interactions, and thought leadership activities.
• Apply deep innovation expertise within a global business context, integrating internal and external perspectives to shape portfolio choices and business outcomes.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Strong strategic leadership and innovation management capabilities.
• Deep understanding of innovation, experimentation, and evidence-based investment approaches.
• Ability to shape and prioritise high-value innovation opportunities in ambiguous and evolving environments.
• Excellent stakeholder engagement and influencing skills across senior business and technology leadership.
• Strong commercial awareness and understanding of how innovation supports growth, differentiation, and competitive positioning.
• Strong communication and storytelling capabilities, including the ability to position innovation strategies, opportunities, and outcomes for executive, client, and external audiences.
• Ability to balance long-term strategic thinking with practical portfolio prioritisation and progression.
• Strong analytical, decision-making, and problem-solving capabilities.
• Understanding of emerging technologies, digital transformation, and innovation trends relevant to clinical research and healthcare.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to engage effectively across global and cross-functional teams.

Education & Experience Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Science, Technology, Engineering, or a related field. Advanced degree (MBA, MS) preferred.
• 10+ years’ experience leading innovation, transformation, strategy, product discovery, or technology-enabled business initiatives.
• Experience leading large-scale or enterprise-level portfolios, strategic initiatives, or cross-functional innovation programs.
• Demonstrated success shaping and progressing high-impact innovation opportunities through structured discovery, validation, and transition activities.
• Experience influencing senior and executive stakeholders within matrixed organizations.
• Strong leadership experience across cross-functional business, digital, data, and technology environments.
• Experience representing innovation initiatives in senior governance forums, strategic planning discussions, or external industry settings.