Overview
The Innovation & Commercialization function is part of the broader Marketing Category organization (including Marketing, Insights, Design, Consumer Engagement), and plays a key role in PepsiCo's accelerated growth agenda across the business.
The purpose of the Innovation & Commercialization function is to Power Positive Growth by delivering smart end-to-end (E2E) solutions that are positive for the portfolio, people & planet, one smile at a time. The function provides strategic & operational governance of PepsiCo's Innovation & Positive Choices agenda, leads platform, program & project management from strategy to action, identifies & intentionally scales winning innovation across the enterprise and provides world class, digitalized, processes, systems & tools to underpin the agenda.
The primary purpose of this role is to enable accelerated, profitable, sustainable growth by driving the rapid prioritization, development & flawless execution, at scale, of a world class pipeline of human-centric innovation that is positive for the portfolio, people & planet. The role has a significant influence on the Business Unit innovation agenda, is at the center of the matrix functionally (working with Marketing, Insights, R&D, Supply Chain & Finance) and has visibility to the BU, Sector and Global Leaders across the organization. The role reports functionally to the Senior Director & Head of Innovation & Commercialization, AMESA, and operationally to the Senior Director Marketing, Egypt Foods BU. An Egypt Foods BU BU Innovation & Commercialization Associate Manager reports into this role.
Responsibilities
3 Lens Innovation Leadership
- Provide unique, 3-Lens leadership expertise across the Desirability, Feasibility & Viability lenses at Hopper, pipeline & project level. Identify the key tensions between a winning consumer proposition, the ability to make/move/sell and the financial viability for PEP & retailers from the outset to deliver a winning, sustainable proposition. This enables key trade-offs to be made early and ensures the Hopper is human centric, strategically sound & affordable and that project teams are set up for success from the start. Ensuring that pep+ is front & center of the 3-Lenses is also a key responsibility of the role.
Intentionally Scale Human Centric Solutions
- Identify winning innovations from across the enterprise that can be Lift & Scaled across the BU by leveraging PepsiCo's digitalized, always-on innovation Hopper, and connectivity with sector functional peers. Support the Desirability assessment of the innovations (category readiness, strategic brand fit, concept appeal) in partnership with Sector/BU marketing teams, drive the Feasibility & Viability assessments, and develop an E2E roll-out master plan and associated capability investments. Define the appropriate governance to ensure delivery to roadmap.
Drive Bold Choices & Winning Execution
- Define the role of innovation within the BU growth algorithm that is consistent with the portfolio & brand growth strategies. Embed & drive PepsiCo's key innovation KPIs, including: incremental, profitable growth (incr NR & GM) ; Hopper/Pipeline sufficiency (Inc NR vs algo need) ; stickability (Household penetration, ROS, NR growth); Simplify to Grow (incr NR per project).
- Creatively orchestrate the development of the BU Innovation Hopper, in partnership with Marketing, R&D & Supply Chain, with particular focus on ensuring innovation sufficiency, scalability, identifying critical platform capability investments and driving trade-offs / phasing.
- Enable best-in-class BU calendar development across the primary focus areas (e.g. Innovation, Positive Choices, Planet Positive, PPA), ensuring the pipeline delivers against Strategic Plan priorities and AOP growth & profitability targets, is affordable & executable. Play the E2E leadership role on commercialization readiness of Calendars for AOP & Customer Sell-In, and ensure intentional pre & post-launch governance of calendar critical projects.
- Drive winning execution of the calendar. Assessing calendar readiness, highlighting risks, mitigations and trade-offs and engaging with Sales to ensure the appropriate focus against each project. Optimizing execution plans to minimize the overall cost of change and complexity and driving focus on stickability of prior year launches
- Deliver best-in-class innovation project management expertise. Managing the scope, milestone & critical path analysis, risks, stakeholder engagement and project budget & P&L. Bring together all elements across Marketing, Sales, R&D, Supply Chain & Finance to deliver projects to agreed scope, on budget, on time. Rapidly identify & course correct risks & opportunities both pre & post launch to maximize scale & success of the project.
- Own BU Innovation governance and the Stage Gate decision making forum to ensure that all projects are cross-functionally aligned and appropriate trade-offs are made between initiatives, brands and categories. Lead regular performance reviews and ensure learnings are built into future projects and calendars.
- Deliver Best-In-Class Capabilities
- Partner with the AMESA Innovation & Commercialization Capability lead to identify key capability requirements for the BU that informs the Sector Capability road-map. Drive BU change management, roll-out & embedding.
- Examples of capabilities include: always-on digitalized Innovation Hopper; 3-Lens digitalized innovation Stage Gate, differentiated by archetype & risk; program & project management excellence, leveraging waterfall & agile methodologies; LEAN methodologies to drive process effectiveness & speed to market
- Accountable for people development for the BU Foods Innovation & Commercialization team (one associate manager)
Qualifications
- Minimum 12+ years business experience, preferably in consumer, commercial or supply chain roles
- Minimum Bachelor's Degree education, ideally in business studies, engineering or finance
- High level of business acumen - must be commercially & organizationally savvy and financially astute. Understanding of the E2E innovation process, from idea to launch, including knowledge of P&L fundamentals, Supply Chain & GTM an advantage
- Results-oriented with a high degree of personal initiative and leadership - can operate well within a low resource, fast-paced cross-functional environment
- Exceptional leader with strong communication and collaboration skills, ability to influence at all levels and comfortable managing conflict
- Proven commercial project leadership/management skills, ability to manage complex functional interdependencies in project timelines
- Strong process thinker committed to driving process efficiency, strength in data analysis and interpretation in order to develop business recommendations and strong analytical thinking to comprehend potential challenges, and propose feasible solutions
