Description

Summary

The Innovation Specialist will provide project and team leadership with an emphasis on shared resources and communications within PlayCore. The role will facilitate business planning and lead execution across a variety of stakeholder groups to support the implementation of our disciplined innovation framework, a variety of product development projects to support our family of brands, research and competitive intelligence, and business planning with a keen focus on value propositions and enhanced customer value.

Reporting to:

Sr. Vice President of Innovation & Business Development

Qualifications

Job Responsibilities:

• Lead shared product component opportunities, especially with commercial play and site companies. Support ‘shared projects’ to gain efficiencies across the brands, minimize duplication, and bring more new news to the marketplace.
• Manage strategic product related outside partnership opportunity discussions and development.
• Lead research and competitive intelligence activities and facilitate shared learnings across our teams and inform our strategies to lead in the marketplace.
• Coordinate partnership with University Industrial Design Program for gained efficiencies and program enhancements that support studio and internship programs.
• Support business planning and project business cases to inform our investment prioritization and ROI.
• Maintain schedule of deadlines and produce data driven reporting to inform project success and continuous quality improvements.
• Organize and facilitate project planning meetings (e.g., strategy sessions, progress checks, project handoffs, etc.) to ensure that all parties involved are properly informed and contributing, as necessary, to ensure alignment, sequencing and execution.
• Collaborating with Senior Product Technology Manager with our disciplined Innovation Framework and the standardization of KPI’s for data-driven decision making.
• Support prototyping, internal and field-testing processes.
• Other projects and activities as assigned.

Desired Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university.
• 5 years plus of related experience.
• Project management leadership role and experience.
• Demonstrate success leading strategic partnerships.
• Process oriented analytical thinking and data-driven decision making.
• Exhibit creative thinking. The ideal candidate will be able to design and support direction to help meet objectives, expected outcomes, and KPI’s that are within budget and resource parameters.
• Possess a strong ability to learn and leverage current methods and effectively learn to utilize internal software systems such as Aha!, AutoCAD, Monday.com, etc.
• Ability to train and influence change management.
• Must be committed to supporting the mission and values of PlayCore.

Additional Information

• Employee Type: Full-time Exempt
• Manages Others: No