Director, Innovation

Work Schedule Standard (Mon-Fri) Environmental Conditions Office Job Description The Innovation Director is responsible for driving innovation across a significant business landscape, concentration area, or horizontal capability, shaping and advancing a portfolio of high-impact opportunities aligned to strategic business priorities. This role provides senior leadership across innovation activities, ensuring opportunities are translated into clear value propositions, supported by robust evidence, and positioned to deliver meaningful operational, commercial, and customer impact. Working closely with senior leaders across business, digital, data, technology, and operational teams, the Innovation Director guides the progression of opportunities from early exploration through validation and transition into implementation. The role acts as a primary senior interface between innovation and downstream execution teams, ensuring continuity of strategic intent and value realization while maintaining focus on opportunity shaping, experimentation, and investment decision support rather than delivery execution. The role also plays a key part in shaping and communicating the organization’s innovation narrative, ensuring a clear and compelling representation of innovation priorities, progress, and impact across internal and external audiences. This position combines strategic leadership, portfolio oversight, stakeholder influence, innovation expertise, and enterprise storytelling to strengthen innovation capability and accelerate transformational outcomes across the organization.

Drive innovation across a significant landscape, concentration area, or horizontal capability, translating strategic priorities into clear direction, focus, and measurable outcomes. Own and oversee a portfolio of innovation opportunities, ensuring coherence, prioritisation, and alignment to strategic and commercial objectives. Lead identification, shaping, prioritisation, and progression of opportunities, ensuring sustained focus on the highest-value initiatives. Maintain continuity of value propositions across the portfolio from early exploration through validation, transition, and adoption. Partner closely with business, digital, data, technology, and delivery leaders to align priorities, shape opportunities, and support effective progression into implementation. Act as the primary senior interface between innovation and downstream execution teams, ensuring propositions are carried forward without loss of strategic intent. Guide portfolio prioritisation and investment trade-offs, balancing emerging opportunity development with scaling of validated concepts. Ensure opportunities are supported by robust evidence, clear assumptions, and well-defined value propositions to inform investment decisions. Contribute to governance, portfolio reviews, and investment decision-making activities across the innovation landscape. Serve as a key counterpart to senior leaders across business, product, digital, data, and technology functions to shape innovation direction from people, process, and technology perspectives. Support and influence long-term strategic planning activities within the assigned remit, contributing to future innovation priorities and capability direction. Identify patterns, dependencies, risks, and emerging opportunities that inform broader portfolio and enterprise innovation decisions. Oversee the development and communication of the enterprise innovation story, ensuring a clear, consistent, and compelling narrative across internal stakeholders, clients, partners, and external industry audiences. Partner with commercial, strategy, and communications teams to position innovation capabilities, thought leadership, and strategic initiatives effectively in the market. Represent the organization internally and externally as a recognized innovation leader, contributing to strategic discussions, industry engagement, client interactions, and thought