The Vice President of Product Development is a dynamic leader and team player with proven ability to drive value creation through cross-enterprise solutions (product, services and programs) that impact the future of AARP and deliver new value to the 50+. A strategic problem solver who enables growth, the incumbent is responsible for developing and executing the strategy and vision for new innovative product offerings, including developing product vision and roadmaps, prioritizing initiatives, and helping to articulate the value of the offerings to the enterprise. This role will lead and manage a team of Innovation professionals and will provide support to innovation teams in the development of early stage concepts as well as lead the charge for the development of innovations from minimal viable concept through launch.
Areas of Responsibility:
Team Leadership:
- Lead, coach and manage the innovation product development team and ensure that the team evolves in alignment with market dynamics, technology, leadership and internal and external expectations.
- Collaborate with cross-enterprise business units including brand & marketing, corporate/business development, finance, legal, customer service and IT to align on product priorities and enable successful product/feature launch and go-to-market plans.
- Assist and empathize with teams as they move through the innovation journey and help them understand how to navigate divergent and convergent phases of development
- Be an acute listener and people person who finds ways to inspire and motivate teams in a manner that propels their solutions forward.
Innovate and Develop Roadmaps:
- Develop and execute a differentiated product vision, strategy and roadmap for AARP innovation product, solution and services to support AARP Enterprise Strategy and impact areas.
- Serve as a consultant and a teacher for the enterprise on innovation, execution and growth leveraging innovation expertise.
- Work with Enterprise Strategy and Issue Areas to translate and leverage important industry trends and market data into unique and differentiating product functionality while providing visionary leadership.
- Possess mastery of innovation behaviors and have a true understanding of how to build on ideas, be open in one’s thinking and identify concepts in a real, tangible way.
Product Execution:
- Drive execution of transformational innovative solutions from ideation through launch, including creating value proposition and identifying viable business models to support AARP goals.
- Devise and execute a winning go-to-market plan with full consideration for business and organizational context.
- Create and support continual improvement of AARP's innovation teams' concepts and roadmaps, taking into account emerging opportunities, challenges and respecting longer term goals and the alignment to the overall organizational vision.
Communication & Vision:
- Evangelize product and innovation vision across the organization and externally.
- Communicate clear plans and timelines to internal and external stakeholders
Complexity:
- Manage multiple innovation projects across the organization with varying degrees of oversight and guidance.
- Possess a great deal of autonomy in decision-making and communications, know when to manage up and identify key areas of decision-making oversight. Ability to identify challenges and develop plans for solution development in order to catalyze the development and creation of ideas with varying level of complexity and feasibility.
- Ability to clearly identify the criteria upon which decisions about ideas should be made and help steer teams in the direction of making autonomous decisions that will move their solutions forward. The diversity of this challenge is broad in application, as this role will involve various divisions, functions and levels of the organization.
- Strong leadership, coordination, communication, storytelling, and low-fidelity design and prototyping skills are required for this position.
Financial and budgetary responsibility
- This position will be responsible for overseeing a budget for solution development activities such as design, prototyping, research and commercial pilots.
Educational Background:
A bachelor’s degree in design, engineering or business required. Master’s degree in relevant field preferred.
Skills/Experience:
- A minimum of 15+ years of product development experience required including 10 years managing teams.
- Must possess a high level of mastery of project leadership, coordination, idea evaluation, and experiment design. Moderate level of fluency in product design, prototyping and sketching required.
- Proven ability to lead effectively in a matrix environment and contribute to cross-functional efforts. Demonstrated ability to collaborate across the enterprise in an extremely complex organization. Ability to gain internal respect and build consensus from superiors, peers and subordinates.
- Demonstrated thought leadership in the practice and application of innovation and agile learning methodologies. Proven track record of developing solution plans and running idea pilots for results-oriented validation. This individual must have superb verbal and visual communication skills in order to help teams understand how to describe and conceptualize their solutions in ways that further development.
- The individual must be a clear and creative thinker combined with acute listening skills in order to ensure that team needs are met. This individual will be perceived as the authority on solution development and refinement in moving solutions through the innovation pipeline. As such, this individual must understand the highs and lows associated with innovation and be able to help teams maintain focus in times of ambiguity and uncertainty.
Compensation/Benefits:
AARP offers competitive benefits with a 401K, 100% company funded pension plan, health, dental, vision and life insurance, STD/LTD, paid vacation and sick, and other benefits.
Job Function:
Organization Info
Listing Stats
Post Date:
Mar 2 2018
Active Until:
Apr 2 2018
Hiring Organization:
AARP
industry:
Nonprofit