Sr. Specialist, Innovation & Strategy

 

Nestlé’s Research & Development Center is our regional powerhouse driving innovation in food, beverage, and pharmaceutical science. Backed by our global Nestlé R&D organization, we lead breakthrough discoveries that are both good for consumers and the planet. Our team of experts range from product developers to engineers, working across our portfolio of food, beverage, infant nutrition, and health science to create leading-edge products and services. As part of our organization, you will use your entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to excellence to unlock the power of food and provide premium value.   

 

This position is not eligible for Visa Sponsorship.

 

In this role, you will impact the future of the biggest coffee global brands by leading the insights learning plan crystallize into global and regional opportunity areas and into validated concepts and prototypes.  You will discover, collect, and consolidate consumer insights, trends, and global opportunity areas into the creation and validation of concepts and prototypes, and continuously seek to improve testing methodologies, processes, and tools in order to drive innovation performance and expand mindsets and traditional ways of working.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Identify actionable and differentiating consumer insights for Nestle Coffee Brands.
• Translate consumer insights into competitive product propositions.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to guide the strategic development of the brand.
• Plan and execute consumer research, adjusting techniques to meet project and budget needs and required pace.
• Drive the adoption of relevant social listening tools for ideation and innovation.
• Pilot new and disruptive techniques.
• Regularly interact with peers in global R&D centers and other research locations
• Act as an internal consultant and innovation insights business partner between R&D, Strategic Business Units, Global Markets, and external agencies with strong stakeholder management and ownership mindset.
• Responsible for the end-to-end process consumer learning and concept testing: briefing, planning, executing, and identifying the most appropriate approach and tools to deliver the defined success criteria.
• Support the Innovation specialists to deliver and build strategic roadmaps and Innovation & Renovation pipelines, ensuring connection to global brand and technical knowledge across the organization to develop holistic solutions with commercial validity.
• Translate trends, weak signals and human behavior into foresights that anticipate consumer needs to incorporate into strategic sessions, ideation workshops, and research activities.
• Identify, size, and prioritize opportunity areas, creating holistic and consumer-driven solutions.
• Conduct qualitative and quantitative consumer research for product design, prototyping development and fine-tuning to final concept validation.
• Act as a translator between the marketing/business and science/technology environments, converting scientific and technical discoveries across R&D into consumer-focused concepts.
• Connect, exchange and build innovation insights  best practices with internal and external networks.

EDUCATION

• Bachelor's Degree in Social Sciences, Business, Marketing or a related field

EXPERIENCE

• 5-10 years of experience in Consumer and Marketplace Insight, preferably with an innovation focus, part of a brand team/commercial team.
• Experience in creating consumer insights that fuel innovation.
• Proficient in cutting-edge and agile insight methods
• Strong knowledge and experience in Qual and Quant research methods.
• Experience in collaborating with senior stakeholders, global brand teams, ideation and concept generation teams, project managers, technical teams, and local market teams.
• Experience in crafting compelling and relevant concepts for testing
• Experience in Growth Hacking would be a plus

SKILLS

• Creative growth mindset with passion for innovation
• Eye for detail yet not losing sight of broader vision
• Positive customer service attitude, action-oriented
• Highly collaborative with strong influencing skills
• Willingness to lead change with ability