Associate Director - Innovation

About the role
We’re looking for an experienced (c.7 years +) insight and innovation practitioner who believes in building market leading client recommendations based on a deep understanding of consumer psychology and behaviour. You will apply and progress the C Space Way of doing client work and will constantly look to push the quality of our client recommendations further. You will have a proven track record in hands-on insight (qual and/or quant), focusing specifically on innovation projects. In the role, you’ll sell & deliver high-impact innovation projects and work together with your Innovation Director to create thought leadership and training for the team.

• Reporting into one of our Innovation Director, your role is focused in three main areas:
• Delivering market leading work within your practice area
• Supporting in the sale of new programmes of work to new clients

Building a thriving Innovation Crew within C Space (alongside your Director)

We expect you to spend the majority of your time (60%) leading & delivering chargeable client work – across long term programmes of work and ad hoc projects.

You will work with your Director to see how to advance the thinking in Innovation so you can develop proprietary IP (approaches, models and frameworks, etc) and training which you would share with the rest of the business. This role is setting you towards a direction of becoming a market leading expert in innovation; speaking at conferences, driving forward new thinking and approaches, coaching upcoming talent in new models, frameworks and approaches. As part of this, we’d expect that you are actively experimenting with different technologies and AI tools to enhance the innovation process.

We would also expect you to work on new opportunities – pitches / proposals / RFIs as well as build strong client relationships deep into organisations, accessing new buying centres. This role may have some line management responsibility.

You should have

A toolkit made up of a variety of innovation methodologies: You understand different methodologies within innovation (e.g. trends, innovation sprints, co-creation with consumers and clients, online communities, opportunity sizing, white space identification, proposition design, go-to-market or launch strategy). You get energy across the innovation journey – from opportunity area creation, trends research and ideation to concept writing and working with the client on implementation.

Specialised innovation expertise: You will have honed an expertise within innovation (i.e. a type of innovation such as service or proposition design, or a specific sector focus). You can fluently and confidently express the consumer and market dynamics within the sectors you have worked across.

Experience in IRL workshop facilitation: You thrive off fast-paced work and enjoy designing and running IRL co-creation workshops and sprints.

A sense of “team”, shared ownership and passion for coaching: You enjoy working as a team and can both upskill junior team members on the job, as well as bring in senior team members at the right point.

The ability to influence key stakeholders: You get energy from getting stuck into client challenges and you’re comfortable running workshops and interviews with senior client stakeholders. You are able to simplify and clarify the way forward for clients and advise/influence/challenge stakeholders across the business.

A curiosity-led mindset: You are intrigued by different ways of running innovation approaches and are constantly looking outside day-to-day projects and to parallel worlds for inspiration.

A commercial mindset: This role is selling AND doing, and you may have a target that you’re responsible for. Of course, we’ll get you support from our dedicated Growth team, but you are entrepreneurial and enjoy making a sale. You also must be comfortable and confident managing scope, pushing back on clients when their asks are unreasonable, so that projects are delivered on time and on margin.

About C Space
We are the world’s leading insight community, customer strategy and innovation experts, putting relationships at the heart of business to drive growth. We make relationships count by building mutual value between people and brands as the ultimate competitive advantage.

As part of Escalent Group, we’re a team of 1,800 researchers, data scientists, moderators, creatives, developers and UX professionals. We put the power of our customer expertise, Escalent’s industry expertise and Hall & Partner’s brand expertise at your fingertips.

Desired Experience & Ethos

• Strong relationship builder. You get your energy from working with others and really listening to their needs.
• Successful problem solving. You have a creative outlook, ‘Yes, and’ attitude and the ability to bring new thinking to problems with energy and enthusiasm.
• Demonstrate gravitas and EQ in all your stakeholder management interactions: you can manage relationships with both senior and junior team members, and bring people of all levels into exploring solutions to given problems and communicating those solutions in a way that ensures buy-in.
• Able to balance commercial needs with people needs. You can operate, and deliver, within a fast-paced environment whilst appreciating the individual differences of people and their resourcing constraints.
• Super organised. You’ve developed ways of working to successfully juggle multiple needs at the same time. You understand what goes into a successful end-to-end innovation project, can think several stages ahead and bring the team with you/ delegate accordingly.
• Great communicator. You have excellent creative writing and oral communication skills.
• Ownership and able to work autonomously and make judgement calls about how projects should run.
• Flexibility and adaptability so you can pivot and adapt priorities as projects run their course.
• Growth mindset and passion for new ways of working – always being on the lookout for how we can add most value to our clients.

We pride ourselves on our friendly but high-performing culture. We love people who are self-starters, see the glass as half-full and thrive in a fast paced, entrepreneurial environment: six directors of the EMEA business have started their career at C Space as entry level consultants.

We are passionate about our people and proud of our culture. We have six ‘behaviours’ to ensure that we are delivering fantastic work, continuing to learn and develop and building a high-performance culture which creates opportunities for those who work here:

• I’ve got this: taking responsibility, doing what we say we will.
• Only accept awesome: delivering high quality work that we are proud of and has impact.
• Show the love: celebrating successes & ensuring everyone has a voice.
• Do what scares you: challenging ourselves, taking risks and learning more.
• Tell it like it is: being honest and freeing ourselves from "office politics" and "hidden agendas".
• Open up and listen: Listening first and fully before we respond or react.

Salary/Package
Alongside a competitive starting salary and bonus structure we offer a comprehensive suite of benefits – from a contributory pension, private medical insurance, cycle to work, paid sabbatical, individual wellbeing funding, free breakfasts, weekly drinks and regular company socials including our Summer Sports day and renowned Christmas parties too.

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