Director - Global Innovation

About GM

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Job Description

The Global Innovation team's mission is to identify, grow and nurture future businesses that present growth opportunities for General Motors. We are now focusing on rapidly growing our capabilities, leveraging the team and processes we have built to further enhance the innovation portfolio. Building on our recent key wins with Guardian, Onstar Insurance and BrightDrop, to scaling our opportunities and accelerating our growth initiatives.

The role of a Director of Global Innovation is to provide leadership and support across a portfolio of businesses while continuously improving the process for creating new businesses. The Director puts in place right-sized individual startup teams, providing guidance and support as the businesses move through the phases of incubation to a minimum viable product (MVP). The role engages with partners across the corporation, securing budget and resources to work on the value propositions being incubated in their portfolio of businesses. As businesses move past their MVP stage and enter a growth stage, the leader continues to provide guidance and support for scaling and eventually for the transition into a GM home-room business unit. For stand-alone operations, the leader helps stand up the requisite structures including Boards and management teams to ensure continued success. The role actively engages across the Global Innovation leadership team to build out and improve the process of innovating by providing thought leadership on how new businesses are built and established inside a larger corporation. This role is also a major contributor in terms of attracting, retaining and growing the innovation talent pool available to GM.

Primary Roles & Responsibilities: As the leader of the Global Innovation incubation team, you will be expected to source problem statements from both inside and outside the company and develop potential solutions into viable business models. You will be responsible for representing the Global Innovation team within the company and outside of the company including attending conferences, leading engagements with startup incubators and facilitating senior leadership discussions. The leader is responsible for aligning cross functional teams as well as internal stakeholders and external partners in order to develop and execute new business opportunities. The execution spans all aspects of business development from product strategy to developing regional/global roadmaps.

Key qualifications/responsibilities include:

• Knowledge of design thinking and lean canvas startup methodologies

• Ability to supervise all elements of the business and product lifecycle; customer and market research, product development and execution, partnership opportunity evaluation and partnership business development execution where relevant.

• Acquire customer insights both qualitative and quantitative

• Develop market insights competitive and future needs

• Business development, including partner strategy, as well as commercial strategy and contract negotiations

• Guide the regional and global growth strategy

• Develop the necessary business case elements to seek approval for product scaling and market expansion

• Ensure the product strategy is aligned with other innovation projects at key breakthroughs points

• Work with the relevant business units to ensure a cohesive migration strategy regarding timing, pricing & packaging, required resources, and appropriate go-to-market and sales plans

• Ability to mentor a team of managers and analysts

• Develop strong, collaborative relationships with adjacent GM teams

Key Competencies:

• Familiarity or experience with product lifecycle management

• Comprehensive understanding of business operations in design, planning, marketing, manufacturing, purchasing, engineering and sales

• Business development skills, including developing commercial models, selling new concepts, and negotiating complex contracts

• Action oriented with a customer focus

Qualifications:

• 10+ years of professional experience in product management, consulting and/or business development

• Bachelor's degree required; Master's or other advanced degree preferred

• Customer focus ability to gather customer insights and prioritize business, market and product activity appropriately

• Experience working with or running startups preferred

• Product management and development experience

• Ability to influence and build strong relationships across organizations

• Organizational and learning agility

• Ability to handle ambiguity

• Complex contract experience

• Business development experience

• Bachelor's degree in related field required, Master's degree preferred

• Familiarity with alternative revenue models

• Proven reporting & analytics background

• Appropriate interpersonal and communication skills to work optimally with business partners toward meeting mutual goals

What success looks like:

• Speed and agility in moving business ideas through the stages of innovation (Ideation, Incubation, Acceleration and Growth)

• Active and engaged support from cross-functional partners

• Create an environment that energizes and motivates teams to build their businesses, take risks, engage across the enterprise and act as owners

• Recognized as a thought-leader on how to effectively establish sustained compelling business value from new value propositions

• Champion inclusion and diversity

Diversity Information

General Motors is committed to being a workplace that is not only free of discrimination, but one that genuinely fosters inclusion and belonging. We strongly believe that workforce diversity creates an environment in which our employees can thrive and develop better products for our customers. We understand and embrace the variety through which people gain experiences whether through professional, personal, educational, or volunteeropportunities.

We encourage interested candidates to review the key responsibilities and qualifications and apply for any positions that match your skills and capabilities.