Innovation Manager

Are you a technology innovation expert?

As our Innovation Manager, you’ll play a crucial part in fostering a culture of innovation within British Heart Foundation (BHF) and be responsible in setting up and overseeing initiatives that drive innovation, leading to sustained growth, maturity, and competitiveness, whilst also delivering exceptional customer experiences aligned to our Technology Vision. 

You’ll work closely with senior leadership to develop strategically aligned activities that support BHF’s overall goals and vision, research problems and ideas, using a variety of tools and techniques, primarily with a focus on the evaluation and prototyping of AI, to progress concepts that could then be developed and launched. 

You’ll act as a facilitator, keeping the customer voice at the forefront, and bringing together teams from various disciplines to encourage collaboration, creativity, and the sharing of ideas. You’ll also value open communication, experimentation, and continuous learning with a fail-fast approach.

Establishing channels and platforms for idea generation, such as brainstorming sessions, suggestion boxes, or digital collaboration tools, you’ll work against agreed processes for evaluating and selecting the most promising ideas for further development. 

You’ll also support the incubation of emerging technology skills, practices, and structures, enabling BHF to better understand opportunities and threats from multiple perspectives.
 
Technology Strategy and Planning
 
The Technology Strategy & Planning team exists to ensure that the Technology directorate does the right things and does them right. The team defines and implements BHF’s strategy for Technology and ensures alignment across the directorate. They establish effective governance and change management, lead continuous improvement & innovation, empower our colleagues through training, & measure outcomes to drive value across our portfolios, people & partners.

Working arrangements
 
Please note this is a fixed term contract for 6 months.

This is a blended role, where your work will be dual located between your home and our London office. 

At BHF we believe in the power of being together, so our colleagues on blended contracts can expect to spend some time in their office, at least one day each week, on average.  The use of our office spaces is driven in part by your role and the activities you need to do. This may vary from time to time, so you will need to work in a flexible way to unlock your best work for our cause. 

About you

Our Technology Vision is to deliver exceptional customer experience, making it easier to grow our income and deliver BHF’s mission and this role will play an instrumental role in making that happen.

With a degree in a business, marketing, technology, artificial intelligence or related commercial discipline or significant equivalent industry experience, you’ll have expert knowledge of innovation product development as well as working knowledge of Agile digital delivery processes and practices.

With a strong background in user experience research and a keen interest in emerging technologies such as AI,AR/VR and loT and a drive to innovate, you’ll have wide-ranging and varied experience in technology, digital, marketing, product development, in both commercial and charity sectors, and will have strong experience designing and developing new product concepts and propositions, alongside proven experience in UX and user research. You’ll be able to manage these through discovery and prototyping and delivering production products to customers against performance indicators including adoption and user satisfaction.

With a track record of launching brand new concepts, campaigns, and products, you’ll be able to analyse and interpret qualitative and quantitative data and insights. You’ll also be able to lead and manage an emerging team, possessing excellent project management, change management, communication, and organisational skills, able to take a flexible, driven and resilient approach to work while maintaining our proactive and adaptive ways of working. You will also be comfortable working with third-party suppliers and external agencies. 

About us 

We value and respect every individual’s unique contribution, celebrate diversity, and make inclusion part of what we do every day. 

Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Strategy, Igniting Change, along with our internal EDI group, Kaleidoscope, and a growing number of employee network groups (our Affinity Groups), help us create an environment where all our colleagues and volunteers can succeed.
 
Interview process 

First stage interviews will be a short one-way video interview; successful candidates will then be invited to attend an interview via MS Teams.