Product Lead: Innovation Incubator|Strategic Initiatives at ooba

JOB DESCRIPTION
ooba is in the business of home ownership. We exist to enable our customers to increase their wealth, happiness, and security through the home ownership dream. This purpose requires a strategic focus on homeowners and for us to develop innovative, value adding products and services that improve their wealth and happiness. We do this through the group’s innovation incubator which uses a combination of design thinking, dual track agile, and lean start-up to identify, analyse, and undertake testable iterative service designs that bring new homeowner focused products and services to the market.

We are looking for top talent that can help us drive growth while also positively contributing to the business’ culture. The Product Lead that we are looking for should have the necessary skills and competencies to come up with solutions that are valuable (bought and used by our clients), viable (works within the constraints of the current market and our business), usable (well designed and simple) and feasible (within our means to develop).

While bringing new product to the market is necessary, it is not sufficient. ooba’s incubator needs to produce sustainably meaningful results in that they increase our customers’ wealth and happiness as well as positively and materially contributes to the Group’s bottom line. 

The mandate of this role is, through deep business analysis, product development and delivery management expertise, to facilitate the product development lifecycle and enable high quality strategic decision making that ensures we meet our group’s strategic objectives. 

RESPONSIBILITIES

Opportunity discovery and product design

•  Identify opportunities for new solutions and/or services
•  Track industry and competitor activity
•  Perform analysis of requirements and facilitate collaborate design to produce feasible, value adding product and/or service propositions
•  Validate new opportunities in terms of value, viability, and feasibility
•  Develop business plans, financial models, feasibility analysis and go to market strategies
•  Develop the product-market fit for new products and services taken on by the incubator

 Product delivery

•  Develop product roadmaps and development plans
•  Translate product strategy into detailed requirements and testable prototypes
•  Lead solutions delivery with cross-functional teams
•  Deliver on product milestones through collaboration with all internal and external stakeholders
•  Collaboratively develop operational execution plans that can transition new products and services into the appropriate area of existing operations
•  Support all aspects of product commercialization and operationalisation

 Incubator culture and operations

•  Contribute positively to team culture and integration of the innovation incubator with rest of the business
•  Effectively manage and make use of the incubator strategy and accountability tools that enable good governance and overall delivery performance
• Actively seek out opportunities that fit with ooba’s strategy and bring them into the incubator’s innovation pipeline

QUALIFICATIONS
Required Qualification & Experience

•  Bachelor’s degree or greater in business, sciences, engineering, or technology.
•  Demonstrable experience in the use of modern product discovery and delivery technique.
•  8-10 years’ experience working on technology-powered products as either a business owner, product manager, product designer, engineer, or analyst.
•  Demonstrable experience successfully driving and managing products within a multi-product environment from ideation through launch in the start-up phases
•  Product strategy and ideation, product-market fit, road map and dual-track agile
•  Experience in developing new markets and managing sales channel mix
•  Scaling up newly established product offerings using a lean start up approach
•  Proven ability to combine the required disciplines of multiple functional business areas in support of bringing new products and services to the market (i.e. technology, design, finance, sales, marketing, operations, and change).
•  Proven ability to engage with developers/engineers, designers, and company leaders in a constructive and collaborative manner that achieves successful product delivery.
•  Fintech, Proptech, and / or financial services experience would be an advantage.

Required Skills & Knowledge

•  Excellent communication and interpersonal skills with the ability to influence, align and integrate cross-functional teams without formal authority or direct reporting lines
•  Strong data analysis skills with the ability to interpret customer needs, market and competitive conditions and then translate these into product enhancement strategies
•  Financial acumen with a demonstrable proficiency in developing business cases, financial models and performing cost benefit and feasibility analyses
•  Target setting, budgeting and working with company financials – income statements, management accounts, etc.
•  Experience specifically in consumer related financial services products is important
•  Exceptional presentation skills
•  Excellent digital literacy
•  Solid knowledge of change management principles
•  Good project management skills
•  Proficient in MS Excel (advanced level)
•  Design thinking experience
•  Product development lifecycle management

Required Competencies

•  Commercial Drive
•  Persuasiveness
•  Directing
•  Performing under pressure
•  Cooperation
•  Devotion to quality
•  Presenting
•  Innovating