Mutual of Omaha - VP Innovation
Interactive Position Description
Innovation and Strategy Leader with 16+ years’ experience developing products, services, brands & businesses that drive sustainable top-line growth for organizations and improve the lives of their customers.
Cross-industry experience and clients include Travelers, Cincinnati Insurance Companies, Prudential, Assurant, AARP, Fifth Third Bank, Delta Faucet, Clorox, Samsung, Philips, Nestle and iRobot.
Interactive Position Description
To connect the VP Innovation position description and my experience, I’ve hyperlinked keywords to proof points and outcomes.
Overview
Provides leadership and direction in the execution of innovation strategy and initiatives aimed at driving meaningful new growth for the enterprise. Builds, develops, and maximizes external relationships with the innovation ecosystem (venture capitalists/fund managers, entrepreneurs, and corporate innovation leaders across peers, reinsurers, and adjacent brands). Leads cross-functional internal teams to discover, validate, prototype, and pilot new solutions across of range of opportunity areas across the life, health, and wealth sectors.
WHAT YOU’LL DO:
Provides leadership and direction for innovation initiatives by establishing short and long-range strategies and plans that support enterprise innovation goals, in partnership with business units and functional units across the enterprise.
Generates a pipeline of innovation opportunities and manages them through an innovation framework to prioritize experiments and lead experiments, test, and pilots.
Evaluates innovation opportunities and develop recommendations for enterprise-wide projects, typically in partnership with other teams within the Strategy & Innovation division, as well as with business unit leaders and cross-functional stakeholders.
Envisions, leads and manages programs aimed at reinforcing our culture of innovation, through mindset, toolset, and skillet enhancement experiences and programs. Serves as an evangelist for innovation both internally (senior management and l associates) and externally.
Represents the Company in ecosystem development efforts with potential partners, including but not limited to startups, corporate partners, Universities, accelerators, venture funds, venture studios and innovation associations. Identifies and builds open innovation partnerships with external partners in service of business unit needs. Identifies, builds and nurtures external relationships to contribute to enterprise and business area innovation goals and growth objectives.
Establishes appropriate targets and measures and a continuous review of performance towards objectives, in the categories of discovery, validation, prototyping and piloting. Leads a high volume of opportunities through Labs, Launchpads, and Studios, or other innovation models.
Continuously builds and enables a culture of innovation and a growth mindset. Creates and enables a flexible, high performing, engaged and diverse team of cross-functional business partners for the duration of strategic innovation projects. Designs and builds a team of dynamic, fail-forward, entrepreneurial-minded individuals to advance innovation within the organization.
Cultivates an awareness of external factors in the ecosystem - consumer behaviors, competitive actions, and other drivers of change (e.g., macroeconomic, regulatory) that may have an impact on innovation initiatives, and/or generate opportunities for future growth. Brings the outside in to inform our organization with insight generated from industry, competitive, technology and consumer research and trend analysis.
Flexes across a portfolio of projects with wide ranging durations, intensity, and stakeholder types. Maintains robust project plans with milestones and progress checks sharable at executive level, as well as workflows/workstreams that organize large groups of enterprise work.
Develops and maintains an engaged workforce.
Develops and maintains a fair and equitable working environment.
ABOUT YOU:
Seasoned knowledge and experience in a variety of innovation methodologies and corporate entrepreneurship (e.g. - design-thinking, lean-startup and agile-thinking).
Ability to engage and manage impactful internal and external partner relationships or networks tied to join innovation opportunities.
Ability to move through project hurdles quickly and engage internal business partners expertly.
Maintains capacity to internalize emerging technology trends and translate them to business opportunities.
Ability to work effectively for high level strategy setting as well as tactical frame-up.
Demonstrated ability and has successfully built a strong innovation culture, including promoting growth in environments where tasks can be ambiguous and complicated and garnering senior executive sponsorship around experimentation and execution of innovation initiatives.
Excellent leadership skills and organizational skills; ability to effectively leads teams through formulation of innovative solutions in an iterative and rapid manner following the innovation process and model
Ability interpret and utilize significant data to make sound business decisions. Proven track record in delivering complex transformation projects successfully and timely, experience in asset management / portfolio measurement specific projects is beneficial.
Ability to effectively lead, influence, and negotiate across different disciplines, internal and external, to achieve desired outcomes.
Excellent communication, interpersonal, consultative and negotiation skills; ability to make effective presentations to executives, partners, startups, cross functional work teams, and other relevant stakeholders.
You help promote a culture of diversity and inclusion within the department and the larger organization. You value different ideas and opinions. You listen courageously and remain curious in all that you do.
References (Client, Supervisor and Direct Reports)
Karen Oettle – Director New Ventures, Assurant Insurance
Relationship: Former client in 2013-15 while at F212
Patrick O’Brien - VP Strategy & Innovation, Prudential Financial
Relationship: Former client in 2015-16 while at Idea Couture
Brad Purnhagen – Innovation Director, Cincinnati Insurance
Relationship: Client in 2019-2021 while at LPK
Jen Knowles – Former SVP Marketing, Babies R Us
Relationship: Former client in 2014-15 while at F212
Suzanne Sysko Clough, MD - Chief Medical Officer at WellDoc
Relationship: Former client in 2009-10 while at Essential Design
Eric Sillies – Senior Experience Director, VMLY&R
Relationship: Direct report 2018-2022 at LPK
Ruth Prentice – Experience Director, Verizon
Relationship: Direct report 2009-2010 at Essential
Scott Stropkay – Partner, Essential Design
Relationship: Supervisor 2006-2010 while at Essential