Research & Development Director at Tiger Brands

The Job

As the R&D Innovation Director, you manage and prioritize the content of the overall pipeline from idea through to commitment, working with the relevant category and group leadership to ensure that we have a pipeline that will deliver on the business innovation ambition. You lead the upfront identification of innovation opportunities against current trends and priorities partnered with the category and group marketing COE team. Externally you develop our capability in open innovations, technical partnerships and trend spot potential for category and cross-category innovation. You may lead Innovation Projects that are cross category or fall in to new categories for the business. As the leader of the Nutrition and Sensory spaces you have responsibility to ensure that the products we develop meet the Health and Nutrition standards set and meet consumer quality expectations. As a Sustainability leader in the business you are on the forefront of setting our Packaging Sustainability goals and enabling the projects in the business. You are responsible for motivating and upskilling your team and the organization on Innovation and helping to create an Innovation culture in Tiger Brands. You are a leader in the R&D function and are expected to work from a One Tiger perspective. 

What You Will Do

• Partner with Category partners to develop their innovation strategy, set innovation targets, develop ideas and properly prioritise the pipeline against priority innovation platforms and to meet business requirements (Top Ten project selection)
• Work with internal and own relationships with external experts (including suppliers and research institutions) to harness and deploy knowledge and know how that maximizes Tiger’s ability to successfully innovate
• Develop Tiger’s approach to crowdsource/have open innovation processes
• Drive knowledge sharing across the portfolios and regions to ensure Tiger achieves both its local and international growth ambitions
• Set Innovation targets for each category using external benchmarking
• Develop and deploy Tiger’s sensory standards for new product development, ongoing benchmarking and for use within the Quality function
• Own the Nutrition Standards for product development and advance our capabilities in the use of Health Claims in marketing
• Partner with Group Marketing COE on ownership of the Eat Well Live Well platform and the Health and Nutrition Strategy
• Develop and deploy the correct measures to track innovation success across the pipeline and through to Commercialisation
• Set, track and enable Packaging Sustainability goals and enable Packaging capability in the R&D organization to meet those goals
• Ensure that you develop and advance your employees, upskilling capabilities

Key attributes and competencies

• Consumer Focused: a deep understanding of marketing with consumer empathy that ensures our R&D pipeline meets consumer needs and Tiger Brands’ purpose to nourish and nurture more lives everyday
• echnical know-how: an understanding of technologies, within an FMCG environment, to ensure cross-functional alignment for project success
• Financial Acumen – A comfort with innovation financials and business case development
• Communication– Ability to communicate with and influence senior leadership as well as front line staff
• Problem Solver– Capable of creative, strategic and innovative thinking that anchors the inception and realisation of advantaged innovations
• Charisma – Ability to attract, mentor and inspire talent

Experience

• A strong track record of innovation delivery
• Management of external collaboration with universities, think tanks, suppliers, start ups etc
• Strong technical and science background in FMCG
• 10+ years experience in FMCG R&D or Marketing Space

What You Will be Measured On

• % of sales from innovation
• Robustness of pipeline against key platforms
• % breakthrough innovation
• People development and succession planning
• Meeting Packaging Sustainability Goals
• # of Effective Consumer, Technical & Scientific Collaborations