Job Title: Innovation Consultant
Job ID: 07867
Division: Business Development
Work Location(s): Wisconsin-Madison
Full/Part Time: Full-Time
Position Objective
This position is responsible for identifying, quantifying and executing key business innovation opportunities in alignment with company goals and objectives. Identifies key technology trends in the industry in alignment with strategic plan, and evaluated those opportunities for company fit in relationship to operational improvements and opportunity gaps in order to build a sustainable competitive advantage. Influences and engages key stakeholders across the organization to ensure successful implementation of innovation projects.
Primary Accountabilities
- Opportunity Execution (40%)
- Leads multi-disciplinary project teams to develop and refine product prototypes into solutions that best fit the company`s business Understands and acts on the linkages between strategy and current and future capabilities. Leads business units in redesigning or creating business processes to integrate new solutions or products.
- Leverages and manages partnerships with universities, businesses, vendors, and other parties to enhance experimentation and design capabilities. Determines the requirements and specifications for product or service design. Designs innovative, conceptual prototypes that meet user needs, limitations, and preferences.
- Updates and communicates status of projects as they move through the innovation process. Compiles a portfolio view of internally and externally generated ideas. Develops metrics to report on innovation process and idea life cycle. Communicates synergies and overlaps to stakeholders. Identifies opportunities to improve the process.
- Facilitates user feedback sessions and analyzes results of usability tests to update designs and prototypes through an iterative process. Coordinates the recruitment of testing participants.
- Collaborates with internal and external partners to ensure the integrity of the design and the translation of the design into a usable product. Participates in reviews to ensure product designs meet usability requirements and standards of good user interface design.
- Manages execution and implementation of innovation projects that have been approved and funded through the corporate strategy portfolio management process. Analyzes project results and makes next-step recommendations.
- Champions the use of usability engineering principles and interface design trends throughout all business areas.
- Opportunity Identification and Prioritization (30%)
- Works with internal and external business partners to identify new trends, offerings, or business partners that are transforming the insurance industry landscape. Screens and categorizes ideas submitted.
- Influences the corporate environment to engage, enhance, and enable innovation throughout the organization by challenging assumptions and creating breakthrough ideas for service, process or product.
- Researches and maintains awareness of industry best practices. Proactively identifies new and innovative ideas and approaches to develop business solutions and enhancements. Monitors industry and competitor trends to determine potential impact to the business.
- Develops internal and external relationships to build awareness of leading technical trends.Manages the ideation portfolio and infrastructure used to collect and track ideas from employees and agents. Captures and logs ideas from Business Development Directors. Leverages technology to support the process. Manages technology vendor relationship.
- Engages employees in innovation activities by using strategic assumptions and priorities to pose questions to employees and ask for solutions to business issues. Explores and validates innovative ideas that support strategy.
- Designs and facilitates employee and agent focus group sessions to generated and flesh out ideas. Guides participants to articulate needs and create a vision for a project or initiative.
- Prioritizes ideas based on strategic assumptions, priorities, and trends from Corporate Strategy.
- Determines if an idea should be passed on to a business unit for further exploration or held within Innovation for further review. Works with internal partners and stakeholders in determining if concept development, experiments or pilots have generated anything to bring forward for proposal.
- Research, Analysis and Prioritization (30%)
- Designs and executes experiments and pilots to test the marketability and scalability of innovative ideas that support business development efforts and company strategy.
- Partners with internal and external subject matter experts to conduct feasibility studies for products and services that show positive results from initial pilots or experiments and determines if a proposal for greater investment is warranted. Identifies business processes impacted by new services and products and leads business units through process creation and redesign to support implementation. Performs economic and cost-benefit evaluations.
- Discovers and evaluates unmet consumer needs, important trends, and new opportunities for business solutions and enhancements.
- Conducts primary intelligence data gathering through focus groups and learning labs, shares findings with applicable business partners.
- Leverages external and internal experts for key research.
- Reviews research reports and provides additional insight or questions from an innovation view point.
- Researches and analyzes user characteristics and needs through such techniques as user profiling, competitive analysis, contextual inquiries, and task analysis.
- Analyzes and interprets data to make recommendations on product or process issues.
Job Competencies
- Achieve Results
- Be Accountable
- Maximize Customer Experience
- Business Acumen
- Entrepreneurial Orientation
- Influence
- Innovation
- Relationship Building
Specialized Knowledge and Skills Requirements
- Demonstrated experience collaborating with a variety of levels of business partners to achieve common business objectives.
- Demonstrated experience consulting and working effectively with senior management.
- Demonstrated experience formulating and communicating conceptual designs for products or services.
- Demonstrated experience translating research findings into business opportunities.
- Demonstrated experience utilizing advanced facilitation skills.
- Demonstrated innovation, product development, or marketing experience.
- Solid knowledge and understanding of business strategy and business development frameworks and concepts.
Travel Requirements
- This position requires travel up to 50% of the time.
Position Details
• Offer to selected candidate will be made contingent on the results of background checks.
• We offer a comprehensive benefits package that includes health, life and dental insurance, a 401(K) plan, paid holidays, vacation and sick leave and the opportunity for career development.
• Relocation assistance is available.
• Offer to selected candidate is contingent on signing a non-disclosure agreement for proprietary information, trade secrets and inventions.
• Offer to selected candidate is contingent on signing a non-compete agreement
LI:SF1
Please review the job requirements.
Job ID: 07867
Division: Business Development
Work Location(s): Wisconsin-Madison
Full/Part Time: Full-Time
Position Objective
This position is responsible for identifying, quantifying and executing key business innovation opportunities in alignment with company goals and objectives. Identifies key technology trends in the industry in alignment with strategic plan, and evaluated those opportunities for company fit in relationship to operational improvements and opportunity gaps in order to build a sustainable competitive advantage. Influences and engages key stakeholders across the organization to ensure successful implementation of innovation projects.
Primary Accountabilities
- Opportunity Execution (40%)
- Leads multi-disciplinary project teams to develop and refine product prototypes into solutions that best fit the company`s business Understands and acts on the linkages between strategy and current and future capabilities. Leads business units in redesigning or creating business processes to integrate new solutions or products.
- Leverages and manages partnerships with universities, businesses, vendors, and other parties to enhance experimentation and design capabilities. Determines the requirements and specifications for product or service design. Designs innovative, conceptual prototypes that meet user needs, limitations, and preferences.
- Updates and communicates status of projects as they move through the innovation process. Compiles a portfolio view of internally and externally generated ideas. Develops metrics to report on innovation process and idea life cycle. Communicates synergies and overlaps to stakeholders. Identifies opportunities to improve the process.
- Facilitates user feedback sessions and analyzes results of usability tests to update designs and prototypes through an iterative process. Coordinates the recruitment of testing participants.
- Collaborates with internal and external partners to ensure the integrity of the design and the translation of the design into a usable product. Participates in reviews to ensure product designs meet usability requirements and standards of good user interface design.
- Manages execution and implementation of innovation projects that have been approved and funded through the corporate strategy portfolio management process. Analyzes project results and makes next-step recommendations.
- Champions the use of usability engineering principles and interface design trends throughout all business areas.
- Opportunity Identification and Prioritization (30%)
- Works with internal and external business partners to identify new trends, offerings, or business partners that are transforming the insurance industry landscape. Screens and categorizes ideas submitted.
- Influences the corporate environment to engage, enhance, and enable innovation throughout the organization by challenging assumptions and creating breakthrough ideas for service, process or product.
- Researches and maintains awareness of industry best practices. Proactively identifies new and innovative ideas and approaches to develop business solutions and enhancements. Monitors industry and competitor trends to determine potential impact to the business.
- Develops internal and external relationships to build awareness of leading technical trends.Manages the ideation portfolio and infrastructure used to collect and track ideas from employees and agents. Captures and logs ideas from Business Development Directors. Leverages technology to support the process. Manages technology vendor relationship.
- Engages employees in innovation activities by using strategic assumptions and priorities to pose questions to employees and ask for solutions to business issues. Explores and validates innovative ideas that support strategy.
- Designs and facilitates employee and agent focus group sessions to generated and flesh out ideas. Guides participants to articulate needs and create a vision for a project or initiative.
- Prioritizes ideas based on strategic assumptions, priorities, and trends from Corporate Strategy.
- Determines if an idea should be passed on to a business unit for further exploration or held within Innovation for further review. Works with internal partners and stakeholders in determining if concept development, experiments or pilots have generated anything to bring forward for proposal.
- Research, Analysis and Prioritization (30%)
- Designs and executes experiments and pilots to test the marketability and scalability of innovative ideas that support business development efforts and company strategy.
- Partners with internal and external subject matter experts to conduct feasibility studies for products and services that show positive results from initial pilots or experiments and determines if a proposal for greater investment is warranted. Identifies business processes impacted by new services and products and leads business units through process creation and redesign to support implementation. Performs economic and cost-benefit evaluations.
- Discovers and evaluates unmet consumer needs, important trends, and new opportunities for business solutions and enhancements.
- Conducts primary intelligence data gathering through focus groups and learning labs, shares findings with applicable business partners.
- Leverages external and internal experts for key research.
- Reviews research reports and provides additional insight or questions from an innovation view point.
- Researches and analyzes user characteristics and needs through such techniques as user profiling, competitive analysis, contextual inquiries, and task analysis.
- Analyzes and interprets data to make recommendations on product or process issues.
Job Competencies
- Achieve Results
- Be Accountable
- Maximize Customer Experience
- Business Acumen
- Entrepreneurial Orientation
- Influence
- Innovation
- Relationship Building
Specialized Knowledge and Skills Requirements
- Demonstrated experience collaborating with a variety of levels of business partners to achieve common business objectives.
- Demonstrated experience consulting and working effectively with senior management.
- Demonstrated experience formulating and communicating conceptual designs for products or services.
- Demonstrated experience translating research findings into business opportunities.
- Demonstrated experience utilizing advanced facilitation skills.
- Demonstrated innovation, product development, or marketing experience.
- Solid knowledge and understanding of business strategy and business development frameworks and concepts.
Travel Requirements
- This position requires travel up to 50% of the time.
Position Details
• Offer to selected candidate will be made contingent on the results of background checks.
• We offer a comprehensive benefits package that includes health, life and dental insurance, a 401(K) plan, paid holidays, vacation and sick leave and the opportunity for career development.
• Relocation assistance is available.
• Offer to selected candidate is contingent on signing a non-disclosure agreement for proprietary information, trade secrets and inventions.
• Offer to selected candidate is contingent on signing a non-compete agreement
LI:SF1
Please review the job requirements.