Newell Brands is looking to solve the problem of creating transformational and expansive new products that serve as part of an optimized portfolio of projects designed to generate sustainable new value creation for the company.
Requirements
- 5-7+ years of experience in Research & Development, product development, or innovation engineering, with experience creating prototypes and working across multiple disciplines in CPG or related industries
- Demonstrated ability to prototype quickly and pressure-test feasibility in the early stages of product development
- Experience translating technical and consumer insights into functional prototypes and technical models, ensuring early feasibility and alignment with innovation propositions
- Background as a flexible innovation engineer or technical generalist, with fluency across multiple domains (mechanical, chemical, packaging) and the ability to pull in specialists when deeper expertise is required
- Experience in optimizing product design to solve business model, IP, supply base or manufacturability challenges with strong technical and financial fluency
- Ability to operate both at the 'big idea' level and in the “weeds” of building stimulus
- Proven track record of working successfully cross-functionally across Marketing, Insights, Design, Legal, Regulatory and Finance
Responsibilities
- Contributing to a Category innovation strategy and leading a team to translate that strategy into actions and plans that create strategic competitive advantage
- Defining opportunities to transform projects from one-off “products” to platforms with sustaining innovation that creates a bigger idea with sustained A&P support to drive habit formation
- Collaborating with Legal and Regulatory to ensure compliance and Freedom to Practices as well as to create opportunities for the creation of competitive Moats using a combination of techniques (patent, trademark, trade secret, supplier relationships, etc)
- Collaborating with Insights, Products Research, and Marketing to unlock deep human understanding and insights on unmet needs
- Harnessing technologies from various sciences to answer “needs Briefs” by identifying unique technical solutions (and possibly inventions) that solve these unmet needs
- Brings strong experience in working with the Industrial Design team to hypothesize and iterate to build winning solutions to deliver unmet needs
- Maintains a strong collaborative network with core business Product, Process, Package and Design leaders to pull them into FEI as appropriate, regularly tapping into their knowledge and mastery
Other
- Strong communication skills and comfort presenting ideas to senior leadership and cross-functional stakeholders
- Experience with navigating ambiguity and adapting plans as new information emerges
- Experience working in a fast-paced entrepreneurial environment, with proven experience with rapid, hypothesis-based iterative learning and testing
- A natural connector who can seek out internal and 3rd party expertise to bring in subject matter expertise to solve key project challenges
- Has an entrepreneurial, curious and solutions-oriented mindset
