VP Innovation

Mission

Drive revenue and earnings growth by ensuring the company is seen by customers as the industry leader partner for new product development and innovation.

Key Deliverables

• Lead and drive timely execution of the company's innovation pipeline to meet SDS growth and profitability goals.
• Collaborate with Marketing to identify and develop new features and enhancement options for existing products.
• Build a high-performance engineering team with diverse expertise in a range of technologies and applications. Provide leadership and guidance to the team while building a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement.
• Redesign the innovation process to reflect customer and market dynamics: Enhance the process to accelerate and strengthen the design brief; Drive deeper engagement with customers to more quickly align on targeted performance; develop more accurate predictive testing; outline a faster approach to prototyping; and, accelerate overall product development.
• Engage and drive alignment with customers on priority projects.
• Engage with suppliers to better leverage their innovation capabilities and resources
• Strengthen innovation governance model to more fully leverage all SDS resources and create better alignment between innovation and business strategy
• In collaboration with SDS Leadership, Marketing and our customers, constantly refresh the SDS innovation agenda.

Required Knowledge, Skills and Approach

• Advanced degree in Packaging Engineering or related field
• 10 years of experience developing liquid dispensing products
• Material Science knowledge
• Understanding of Injection Molding
• Knowledge of dispensing markets and applications and a proven track-record of collaboration to bring new products to market. Knowledge of CPG customers development processes and requirements is preferred
• Knowledge of Sustainability trends and the implications for product development & product performance
• Disciplined approach to project management with excellent skills at leading cross-functional teams through accelerated brief development processes through each stage of the stage gate process.
• Understanding of financial metrics and business case development
• Passion and sense of urgency to bring projects to a successful commercialization
• Strong analytical & problem-solving skills
• Comfort with being a challenging partner
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Continuous improvement mindset
• Exceptional leadership & collaboration skills: A global orientation with the ability to lead across cultures