In the North America Operation Unit (NAOU), this position stewards the Innovation process and acts as an advisor to the senior leadership team to achieve the established Innovation growth targets by identifying gaps in the Innovation pipeline and manages the stages and gates process and the innovation pipeline management platform.
This enables leadership to make fact-based decisions around pipeline management and provides the frameworks, processes, and tools to effectively and efficiently manage projects which will deliver the Group/Business Unit growth commitments.
As the Innovation Manager, you will guide project leads and their cross-functional teams to bring innovation projects to market using stages and gates process and supporting tool. You will also provide aggregate pipeline information and insights to decision makers so that our NAOU focuses limited resources on bigger, better innovation projects.
Key Objectives/Responsibilities:
Steward people and projects in the stages and gates process, and use of the platform.
- Coordinate and facilitate the stage and gate process for all Innovation projects.
- Custodianship of the innovation pipeline management platform.
- Develop and maintain reporting dashboards and tools to support innovation processes, e.g., decision-making, pipeline prioritization, resource allocation.
Lead effective reviews of the Pipeline of Innovation initiatives.
- Align senior leadership on Innovation growth targets (what success looks like) and corresponding planning objectives.
- Conduct routine reviews for the pipeline of Innovation projects with senior leadership.
- Conduct and report analysis on the Innovation pipeline (e.g., by strategy, category timeframe, risk level …) and identify gaps versus the growth commitments.
- Advise senior leadership on actionable decisions to course correct the pipeline content and follow-up on agreed actions.
Assist senior leadership selecting the most attractive Innovation projects to move forward based on documented project risks/benefits business cases.
- Coordinate with senior leadership the definition and use of gate guidelines and use minimum thresholds to select projects.
- Document and communicate the outcome of gate meeting in a timely manner.
- Coach project managers and Gate committee on their respective roles and responsibilities for Gate meeting, especially around risks transparency
- Establish the necessary mechanisms/tools to track and measure Innovation process effectiveness and business impacts.
Leverage existing successes from other regions through a strong search & reapply practice.
- Encourage search & reapply practices for each Innovation project prior to gate decisions.
- Proactively collect and share potential candidates from other regions for reapplication in the Group/Business Unit
- Represent North America Operating Unit in Global Innovation community forums. Transfer knowledge of system best practices to/from NAOU.
- Connect with other regions to gather and share successful practices on Innovation Pipeline management, Gate Management, and other key duties of the role.
Foster effective execution of Innovation projects by project teams
- Manage agenda and content for innovation decision routines across all Product Categories and Routes-to-Market for the NAOU
- Facilitate training on innovation processes. Train all new project team members on roles and responsibilities on Innovation processes and tool
- Coach project managers and teams to diligently execute stage tasks and prepare gates (process adherence)
- Ensure project managers seek cross-functional and cross-system alignment prior to each gate meeting.
Lead continuous improvement of the Innovation capabilities of the Group/Business Units
- Coordinate and facilitate post launch or postmortem review of all Innovation projects to enable a better understanding of gate decision business impacts within the Gate committee.
- Coordinate with the Gate committee to continuous improvement of Gate guidelines based on Post Launch Review learning.
- Continuously improve the stage key tasks definition and awareness within the team members.
Job Requirements
Leadership Skills:
- Influencing the organization
- Leading through Change, comfortable with ambiguity
- Establishment of vision and strategy
- Imports and exports innovative ideas; system learnings, as well as original thinking
- Superior communication skills, comfortable pushing back and tactfully challenging projects/thinking that does not comply process or the established thresholds.
- Reduce complex issues to clear, understandable courses of action.
- Facilitation and training skills
- Establish collaborative working relationships with different cross-functional areas.
- Sustains operational excellence and continuous improvement.
Base Salary: $116,500 to $145,800
Base pay offered may vary depending on geography, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. A full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the position, are offered.
Specific Experience:
- Knowledge of The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC) operating environments or experience in a like matrix structure (e.g., Marketing, Strategic Planning, Finance, RGM, R&D, Supply Chain, Commercial Ops, Channel Strategy, etc. …)
- Knowledge of Innovation processes (e.g., stages & gates, product development, package development …)
- Project Management expertise
- Strong experience with IT business tool (Excel, PowerPoint, PowerBI, databases …)
- Value Chain knowledge
- Leading through Change
Education, Preparation :
- Bachelor’s Degree Required
- At least 3 years of work experience in a similar company and role
Skills:Leadership; Innovation; Innovation Processes; Innovation Projects; Cross-Functional Teamwork; Business
Our Purpose and Growth Culture:
We are taking deliberate action to nurture an inclusive culture that is grounded in our company purpose, to refresh the world and make a difference. We act with a growth mindset, take an expansive approach to what’s possible and believe in continuous learning to improve our business and ourselves. We focus on four key behaviors – curious, empowered, inclusive and agile – and value how we work as much as what we achieve. We believe that our culture is one of the reasons our company continues to thrive after 130 years. Visit Our Purpose and Vision to learn more about these behaviors and how you can bring them to life in your next role at Coca-Cola.
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