Associate Director – Innovation

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Brazil, +1 more country.

📋 Description

• Define and enhance a designated innovation landscape or segment of the portfolio

• Convert strategic priorities into discovery themes, opportunity areas, and learning objectives

• Lead discovery and validation initiatives, ensuring alignment, coherence, and focus with business priorities

• Recognize, articulate, prioritize, and confirm potential opportunities

• Guide decisions on portfolio trade-offs and advise on whether to explore, validate, pause, pivot, or discontinue opportunities

• Detect patterns, unmet needs, emerging opportunities, risks, and interdependencies within focus areas

• Maintain the framing of opportunities and value propositions from exploration to concept validation

• Ensure that opportunities have well-defined problem statements, strong assumptions, relevant evidence, and clear value propositions

• Supervise discovery, opportunity shaping, experimentation, concept testing, and evidence synthesis

• Define outcomes for validation and establish decision criteria

• Collaborate with business, digital, data, science, technology, and subject-matter experts

• Contribute to governance and portfolio evaluations

• Represent the team in leadership discussions and escalate decisions, risks, dependencies, and resource limitations

• Incorporate cross-functional and cross-market insights into innovation choices

• Lead, mentor, and develop team members

• Set strategic direction across various opportunities and team members

• Distribute resources and leadership focus across the portfolio

• Enhance team skills in discovery methods, opportunity framing, experimentation, evidence quality, stakeholder management, and decision-making discipline

• Assist in succession planning, development, and workforce strategies

⛳️ Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in business, science, technology, engineering, or a related discipline

• Advanced degree (MBA, MS) is preferred

• 8–10 years of experience in innovation, strategy, discovery, research, or consulting roles within a complex global organization, or equivalent experience

• Proven experience in managing and prioritizing a portfolio of discovery, experimentation, or concept-validation initiatives

• Capability to translate strategic priorities into targeted opportunity areas, learning agendas, and evidence-based recommendations

• Experience in leading teams and developing capabilities at various levels

• Strong analytical, strategic, and systems-thinking skills

• Proficient in executive-level stakeholder engagement, influence, and decision-making support

• Experience in guiding opportunities from initial exploration through structured concept validation and decision readiness

• Relevant education, training, and/or directly related experience may be considered as an equivalency

• Preferred experience in clinical research or the pharmaceutical industry

• Familiarity with experimentation, hypothesis-driven innovation, customer or user research, concept testing, and evidence-based portfolio decisions

• Experience working across various markets, business units, or geographic regions

• Awareness of emerging technologies, industry trends, evolving customer needs, and new business models

• Strong communication skills to convey and comprehend information and ideas with diverse groups

• Ability to work upright and stationary for standard working hours

• Proficient in using and learning standard office equipment and technology

• Ability to thrive under pressure while managing multiple projects or activities

• May require occasional travel (0–20%) domestically and internationally

• Must be legally authorized to work in your country of residence without sponsorship

• Must successfully pass a comprehensive background check

🏝️ Benefits

• Fully remote work option

• Standard work schedule from Monday to Friday

• Occasional domestic and international travel (0–20%)

• Relocation assistance is not provided