Description About this Opportunity
As the Vice President of Global Product Innovation, you'll establish and drive a strategic roadmap of innovation that delivers step changes in product performance through advances in materials, methods, and technologies. Fueled by customer insights, Herman Miller future insights, and corporate strategies, you will develop and champion a clear strategy defining specific areas of innovation exploration. You'll propose and refine prioritized opportunity areas with leadership, then identify and drive specific projects to prepare them for in-line category and development teams to bring to market. You will connect to global leaders in advanced materials and technologies to continually uncover innovation opportunities for our product portfolio. You'll also advance the sustainability of the products we provide across all of our brands.
What You'll Do
You'll have opportunities to speak up, solve problems, lead others, and be an owner every day as you...
- Establish and communicate a clear, ownable, and actionable innovation roadmap.
- Develop and lead a team of scientists, engineers, and designers through clarifying roles and responsibilities and setting clear team performance expectations. You'll drive innovation processes and culture that allow for and nurture the generation of new ideas. You'll also build partnerships across business functions to bring needed skills to project teams.
- Create the design brief and business proposal for innovation projects and drive the completion of those projects.
- Regularly report on the overall roadmap, in-process project cadence, and overall metrics of team success.
- Drive projects that support our corporate sustainability goals.
- Lead successful hand-offs of commercial innovations to categories and development teams.
- Maintain knowledge of material and technology advancements, constantly seeking potential opportunities for product performance improvements.
- Partner with Category, Development, Design, and Creative leadership to assess and refine innovation priorities and select specific projects.
- Partner with Marketing leadership to craft and execute marketing plans that position Herman Miller Group as an innovation leader.
- Coach, mentor, and develop leaders; ensure the organization is identifying and grooming next level leaders; and lead succession planning activities for your functional area.
Sound Like You?
You might be just who we're looking for if you have...
- A Bachelor's degree in Material Science, Engineering, Design, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and professional experience. A Master's degree is preferred.
- 10+ years of in-depth experience in innovation and design with practice in advanced materials.
- Five years of leadership experience across multiple functions and/or previous executive leadership roles.
- Five years of project leadership experience, global project leadership experience is preferred.
- An in-depth understanding of and work history in the application of innovation science.
- Strong relationship and consensus-building skills to manage projects in a complex matrixed environment.
- The ability to lead, influence, and work with all levels in the organization.
- An expert ability to think strategically and execute tactically.
- The ability to use a broad business acumen and holistic perspective to see the opportunities and risks of potential trade-offs.
- A profit conscious mindset and proficiency with P&L responsibilities.
- An aptitude for leading through influence, setting direction, and delivering results.
- Experience with change management principles and the ability to drive and manage the change process from strategic planning through implementation and follow-through.
- The ability to easily make connections among previously unrelated notions.
- Demonstrated leadership competence, including the ability to effectively focus resources to implement a business strategy, lead teams, generate excitement around and commitment to the vision, and to implement goals that drive innovation and change.
- Excellent coaching, mentoring, and people development skills.
- Outstanding expert written/verbal communication skills, and a proven capability to present complex concepts in a concise and understandable way to a variety of audiences, including the highest level of the organization
Who We Are
At Herman Miller, our unique culture represents the collective attitudes, ideas, and experiences of the people who work here. We focus on protecting the environment, impacting our communities, exceeding the expectations of our customers through high quality products, and championing diversity in all areas of the business, and together we are on a journey toward a better world. We support the well-being of our employees in and outside of work by providing a variety of opportunities including award-winning work-life integration resources, development programs, complex health and wellness offerings, and much more.
Herman Miller is a globally recognized provider of furnishings and related technologies and services. Headquartered in West Michigan, we have relied on innovative design for over 100 years to solve problems for people wherever they work, live, learn, and heal.
Herman Miller is committed to diversity and inclusion. We are an equal opportunity employer including veterans and people with disabilities. Schedule: Full-time
Employee Status: Regular
Travel: Yes, 25 % of the Time
Shift: First
Work Schedule: 8am-5pm
Primary Location: United States
