Summary
Date Posted: Monday, July 12, 2021 , Base Salary: Not Disclosed

JOB DETAILS:
Job Title: Technical Advisor - Innovation

JOB SUMMARY:
Global Communities is an international non-profit organization that brings together local ingenuity and global insights to save lives, advance equity, and secure strong futures. Global Communities seeks a Technical Advisor - Innovation for the Innovation Works team within the Strategic Information, Innovation and Learning (SIIL) team. The Innovation Works team is responsible for creating and nurturing an organization-wide innovation ecosystem within Global Communities. The Technical Advisor will: (1) help envision and establish a process that supports early stage ideation and rapid prototyping of products, services and processes that advance the organizational mission and strategy; (2) provide technical advising and capacity strengthening to country teams and functional departments/units in applying innovation tools and methodologies; and (3) work with the Senior Director Innovation, SIIL and other leadership of the organization to nurture the innovation ecosystem at Global Communities.

PRIMARY JOB RESPONSIBILITIES:

Planning and Target Setting (5% LOE)
• Inform draft framework and plan with Innovation Works/SIIL teams
• Inform agile management system to support Innovation Works team management efforts

Early-stage Ideation and Rapid Prototyping (30% LOE)
• Support the design of process and procedures to promote/incentivize ideation across the organization – particularly in strategic priority areas. Develop procedures to solicit new ideas each year, and subsequent outreach and dissemination through presentations, emails, and outreach through various internal communication channels.
• Develop and support a process for selection and investment in innovation. Design and develop an internal pipeline of proposals with an estimated volume of 50-100+ product level innovations each year and at least two different stages (proof of concept and scale up), conducting initial screening and organization and management of the review process that would include internal and external review panel members.
• Manage and track funding allocations to support prototyping of innovations. Track allocations, expenditures, and progress reporting on up to 12 product level innovations each year and up to several hundred process level innovations.

Technical Advising and Capacity Development (40% LOE)
• Facilitate innovation workshops and design sprints. Conduct 1 to 2 day workshops focused on particular innovation methods such as lean or agile, and anticipated to be 2 to 4 per year and may or may not be tied to direct program requirements. Design sprints will be directly tied to the funded prototype as well as design sprints that are integrated into program designs. Design sprints involve 1 to 2 months of planning leading to an intensive 4 day sprint with 15 to 20 participants that takes them from ideation to prototyping.
• Provide bespoke innovation services and assistance to specific projects or functional areas as requested – particularly in the areas of lean, agile, human-centered design and innovation design.
• Support the establishment of partnerships with frontier technology firms and research institutions that can support innovations and extend our expertise to solve big problems. Frontier technologies will be instrumental in generating new approaches to entrenched problems.
• Provide technical assistance and support to teams leading Global Communities’ social enterprise, entrepreneurial and other innovative initiatives including AfriScout which has traditionally been part of this portfolio.
• Support or lead business development efforts that will finance development or scale of specific innovations; and that help support the Innovation Works initiatives more broadly. Support or lead 4 to 6 proposals each year that have a focus in whole or in part on the innovation process or specific innovations that are generated through the Innovation Works pipeline.
• Collaborate closely with the local capacity strengthening, staff development/learning, technical, programmatic, and strategic growth and partnership teams at headquarters and in the field to ensure knowledge and skills transfer to local partners and staff, as well as the incorporation of innovation and innovative design elements into program designs, learning agendas, and proposal development, program implementation, thought leadership and capacity development efforts.

Innovation Ecosystem Development (10% LOE)
• Support the development an ecosystem nurture plan. Developed in Year 1 and revisited each year, this plan will require working across multiple departments and country operations to identify and support activities that will help build a culture of innovation in support of our strategic plan.
• Inform recruitment/hiring processes regarding techniques that help to evaluate an individual’s and/or team’s innovation and agile mindset.
• Review/recommend policy changes that can enhance our innovation ecosystem. Identify with leadership and P&C evidence-based policies used elsewhere that help incentivize innovation and build a culture of innovation.
• Provide technical assistance across the organization in the design of actions to strengthen the eight attributes of a highly effective innovative organizations – aspire, mobilize, discover, choose, accelerate, extend, scale and evolve.

Track, Measure and Inform (10% LOE)
• Inform metrics that bridge to, Global Communities’ backbone information systems (i.e. Salesforce, ERP, etc.) in collaboration with MELI and IT. The result of this activity will be a mechanism to continuously track innovations and innovation activity including, # of innovations in the pipeline, innovation results/impact, resource mobilization efforts and outcomes, training, and ecosystem development results.
• Assist in defining and implementing simplified systems for tracking prototype applications, progress and expenditures.
• Assist in defining and implementing simplified systems for monitoring and reporting on the innovation ecosystem, including return on investment calculations and analysis
• Inform regular measurement, reporting and feedback mechanisms with Global Communities leadership on the state of innovation within the organization and its partners. This will include an annual innovation report, special highlights bulletins, and regular updates through internal communications platforms.

Leadership and Management (5% LOE)
• Collaborate with the Senior Director to provide overall leadership for Global Communities’ Innovation Works team, including the recruitment and supervision of up to two interns and consultants.
• Contribute to organizational leadership by participating in cross-functional, organization-wide discussions, decisions and actions driven by the strategic plan rollout as it pertains to innovation – particularly Strategic Priorities 1, 2 and 3, all of which have innovation components.
• Collaborate with technical and program teams to ensure buy-in and effective quality integration of innovation into project designs and programming.
• Support the Director in the planning and execution of innovation-related budget to achieve revenue and spending targets and maximum return on investments related to Innovation Works

POSITION SPECIAL RESPONSIBILITIES:
• 25-35% travel required, both domestic and international
• Other tasks as assigned

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ABILITIES
• Insights and experience in supporting technology enabled social innovations.
• Deep insights in the social innovation sector – particularly in the global south.
• Advanced competencies in team building, mentorship, and facilitation of complex processes.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Superb written and verbal communication skills.
• Superb coordination, collaboration and networking skills.
• Strong resource mobilization skills and demonstrated expertise in mobilizing private and public funding for organizational development and cross-cutting programmatic areas
• Ability to think and act strategically at all levels and all situations.
• Foreign language capacity preferred.
• A passion for the mission and values of Global Communities

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:
(Minimum work experience and education requirements are established for the position’s level and will be provided by People & Culture)
• Undergraduate degree in a related discipline and a minimum of four years work experience or a minimum of eight years of related work experience.
• Requires specialized knowledge of work discipline.
• Specific experience in innovation design, training and embedding innovation within an organization through the provision of technical assistance and support.

Education Requirement: No Requirements

Job Experience: No Requirements

Work Hours: 8 Bachelor Degree

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Job application procedure
Interested candidates should forward their updated CV and application letter ONLY to kevacancies@globalcommunities.org  with clear subject: TECHNICAL ADVISOR - INNOVATION on or by July 16, 2021.
Those who applied before need not to apply again.
Global Communities is an equal opportunity employer.

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