HEAD OF INNOVATION
Department: Business Development
Reporting Relationships: Chief Business Officer
Company Background:
Located in the East of England’s life sciences cluster, with close links to London, Stevenage and Cambridge, Discovery Park has grown to be a thriving part of the South East’s life science community and is the cornerstone of the UK’s healthcare sector. The growing tenant community includes Pfizer, which built the site’s reputation as a centre for drug discovery and discovered some of the most famous drugs in the world here.
We have a rapidly expanding and vibrant tenant community with over 160 companies, from start ups to multinationals, working in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, healthcare, technology, professional services and more. The site offers high quality laboratory, office and manufacturing facilities, the space and support to expand, access to local finance, and a strong local scientific talent pool.
The park is focused on becoming a world class, world leading science park, growing and attracting innovative life sciences companies. Our exciting plans include a new Incubator facility in Building 500, and development of a Manufacturing Village. Working with tenants and partners we look to bring new activities to site and drive forward areas such as Tech Bio/Digital Health, Industrial Biotech and Neuroscience.
Discovery Park Management Ltd (DPML) supplies facilities support to the park – buildings, grounds, roads, infrastructure and communication networks. We also supply utilities to all the buildings and valuable services such as front of house, cleaning, catering and conferencing. Moving forward the focus will be on optimising our operations, continued efficiency, a focus on growth to ensure our ambitions are realised.
Our core values will support a culture focused on quality and continuous improvement. We are committed to Inspirational Leadership and being People Focused, through whom we will deliver Operational Excellence and create a Community Spirit that will shape our future and will expand Discovery Park as a global centre for life sciences and technology.
Main Purposes of the Job:
Reporting to the Chief Business Officer, you will be instrumental in the delivery of Discovery Park’s mission to build and develop a science and technology cluster; supporting science and technology-based start-ups, spinouts, and scaling businesses to commercialise innovation and accelerate growth.
A highly entrepreneurial and commercially astute individual, you will play a key role in proactively identifying new business opportunities. We seek someone with the ability to develop effective relationships with a broad range of stakeholder groups, including current and future bio-entrepreneurs and founders and partners across the commercial, academic, and healthcare community. Working to proactively identify opportunities with commercial potential, you will help to shape and deliver the development pathways to take ideas forward, providing support along the entrepreneurial and commercialisation journey.
An enthusiastic and ambitious individual, you will help shape Discovery Park’s innovation culture, driven by a desire to support the success of Life Sciences and Healthcare organisations committed to providing solutions for global healthcare.
Essential Duties & Responsibilities:
This newly created role will have several key functions:
- Seek collaborative partners, funding opportunities and connections for our existing tenant base to help facilitate their growth.
- Develop relationships with Technology Transfer Office and commercialisation teams within the local and London based Universities and work with them to identify potential occupants for Discovery Park.
- Create and develop business support programmes to assist our growing tenant base.
We welcome applications from those who enjoy variety, embrace change, and have a strong sense of ownership and accountability.
Educated to at least degree level within a technology or life sciences discipline, you will understand the process required to take innovative ideas from concept through all development stages to commercialisation and a proven track record of interacting with internal and external stakeholders at all levels. Possessing a genuine ability to grasp complex technical concepts, you will be able to create value from innovation, acting as an interface between our tenant base and academic partners across the Southeast and further afield.
In the role of ‘enabler’, you will be an interface between Discovery Park, TTO’s, spinouts, start-ups, and corporates, aligning commercial interest against the sites’ strategic goals and the activities of our existing tenant base. You will have working knowledge of leading and supporting technology translation and developing roadmaps to ensure our companies are successful and that their technology development and product innovation meets market requirements.
A key aspect of this role will involve identifying spinout or start up opportunities that would benefit directly from Discovery Park support (and the further assistance of our partners) building relationships and helping to build our pipeline of potential tenants.
The successful applicant will demonstrate an exemplary level of communication and project management skills, managing multiple stakeholders and balancing client expectations to the highest level. You’ll develop and maintain an innovation network through multiple channels including events, newsletters, webinars, and social media; working with the marketing team to develop an effective approach to knowledge sharing and dissemination of information across the organisation, to partners and wider ecosystem.
You’ll be expected to attend external events relevant to innovation activity on site and develop and report on effective KPI’s.
Additional Duties & Responsibilities:
Any other reasonable duties as required by the Business and/or directed by Management.
Person Specification:
Essential:
- A degree in a technology or science discipline
- Commercially focused with a ‘Can do’ mentality and a desire to succeed you will seek to find the ’win win’ for academic partners and our tenant base
- Excellent communication, presentation, and Project Management Experience
- An inherent ability to influence stakeholders at all levels of seniority, you will have been instrumental in sourcing, engaging, and developing long-term relationships within a vast range of local, regional, and national stakeholder groups and have a well-established network across industry, academia, and third-party organisations.
- Ability to manage multiple projects and workloads with excellent time management and planning skills to enable prioritisation of work.
Desirable:
- You will ideally have proven experience in supporting sustained growth and development within a cluster environment, ensuring highly effective facilities and frameworks are in place to support founders/entrepreneurs of biotechnology from pre-start-up through to scale–up.
- Experience of supporting the design and delivery of programmes that assist founders and entrepreneurs to accelerate commercialisation, start-up, and growth of Life Sciences businesses at each stage of development, pre-start, early-stage start-up, and growth companies.
- A proven track record of designing and managing the delivery of networking events that provide expert insight to pre-start and established businesses
Note: The Job Description is not intended to be all inclusive. The job holder may be required to perform other related duties to meet the on-going needs of the Company.
Salary: DOE, approx £60k
Please email jane.kennedy@discovery-park.co.uk with your CV and cover letter to apply.
