[Remote] Innovation Director, Clinical Research Group
Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Thermo Fisher Scientific is a leader in healthcare innovation, and they are seeking an Innovation Director for their Clinical Research Group. The role involves driving innovation across significant business landscapes and ensuring that opportunities are translated into clear value propositions, while collaborating with senior leaders to guide the progression of opportunities from exploration to implementation.
Responsibilities
- Own and oversee a portfolio of innovation opportunities, ensuring coherence, prioritization, and alignment to strategic and commercial objectives
- Lead identification, shaping, prioritization, and progression of opportunities, ensuring sustained focus on the highest-value initiatives
- Guide portfolio prioritization and investment trade-offs, balancing emerging opportunity development with scaling of validated concepts
- Contribute to governance, portfolio reviews, and investment decision-making activities across the innovation landscape
- Support and influence long-term strategic planning activities within the assigned remit, contributing to future innovation priorities and capability direction
- Identify patterns, dependencies, risks, and emerging opportunities that inform broader portfolio and enterprise innovation decisions
- Oversee the development and communication of the enterprise innovation story, ensuring a clear, consistent, and compelling narrative across internal stakeholders, clients, partners, and external industry audiences
- Partner with commercial, strategy, and communications teams to position innovation capabilities, thought leadership, and strategic initiatives effectively in the market
- Represent the organization internally and externally as a recognized innovation leader, contributing to strategic discussions, industry engagement, client interactions, and thought leadership activities
Skills
- Bachelors degree in Business, Science, Technology, Engineering, or a related field
- Previous experience leading innovation, transformation, strategy, product discovery, or technology-enabled business initiatives that provides the knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform the job (comparable to 10+ years' experience)
- Experience leading large-scale or enterprise-level portfolios, strategic initiatives, or cross-functional innovation programs
- Demonstrated success shaping and progressing high-impact innovation opportunities through structured discovery, validation, and transition activities
- Experience influencing senior and executive stakeholders within matrixed organizations
- Strong leadership experience across cross-functional business, digital, data, and technology environments
- Experience representing innovation initiatives in senior governance forums, strategic planning discussions, or external industry settings
- Deep understanding of innovation, experimentation, and evidence-based investment approaches
- Strong commercial awareness and understanding of how innovation supports growth, differentiation, and competitive positioning
- Strong communication and storytelling capabilities, including the ability to position innovation strategies, opportunities, and outcomes for executive, client, and external audiences
- Ability to balance long-term strategic thinking with practical portfolio prioritization and progression
- Strong analytical, decision-making, and problem-solving capabilities
- Understanding of emerging technologies, digital transformation, and innovation trends relevant to clinical research and healthcare
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to engage effectively across global and cross-functional teams
- Able to communicate, receive, and understand information and ideas with diverse groups of people in a comprehensible and reasonable manner
- Able to work upright and stationary for typical working hours
- Ability to use and learn standard office equipment and technology with proficiency
- Able to perform successfully under pressure while prioritizing and handling multiple projects or activities
- May require as-needed travel (0-20%) domestic and international
- Must be legally authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship
- Must be able to pass a comprehensive background check, which includes a drug screening
- Advanced degree (MBA, MS) preferred
- In some cases, an equivalency, consisting of appropriate education, training, and/or directly related experience will be considered sufficient for an individual to meet the requirements of the role
Benefits
- This position may also be eligible to receive a variable annual bonus based on company, team, and/or individual performance results in accordance with company policy.
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