Head of Innovation

Job overview

The post holder will act as the lead for innovation development across the organisation, providing operational management and strategic leadership for the innovation agenda. They will be required to create, implement and lead the long-term Innovation Strategy for the Organisation and ensure it aligns with the Organisational Strategy, People Strategy, Research strategy and ICT strategy. The post holder will also work in synergy with our UHCWi programme to ensure the innovation and improvement priorities align.

The post-holder will work across clinical specialisms and operational functions to lead, initiate, implement organise, and manage a broad programme of research and development activities related to innovation. This encompasses projects within development of internal ideas, adoption of external innovations, building an innovation community around the Hub and staff engagement. This work will lead to fundamental changes in services and practices that ensure the Trust continues to develop high quality, sustainable services. The post holder will ensure these developments are based on research and evaluated appropriately.

Main duties of the job

• Be responsible for the services provided by the team, assessing and monitoring resources to ensure that the appropriate capability, capacity, structure and culture is in place to enable the team to provide a proactive and influential contribution to delivering the Trust’s strategic ambitions around innovation.
• Work with local and national academic and business leaders to promote and encourage new collaborations, attending and presenting at local meetings as required.
• Contribute to the delivery of corporate objectives by providing professional internal development opportunities; developing team credibility within the Trust in order to persuade, influence and affect change at senior executive and management levels.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• Oversee the collection, assessment and evaluation of enterprising and innovative staff ideas
• Design, implement and maintain an innovation ideas pipeline, and project management approach to ideas
• Oversee and organise the management of a portfolio of staff enterprise innovation ideas, monitoring and reporting on progress of these and any associated Intellectual Property. Reacting to changes in priorities and plans.
• Apply specialist theoretical knowledge on innovation management, user-centred design and human factors principles to the development of ideas and the pipeline process. As well as employing research methodology knowledge to ensure evidence-based practice and appropriate evaluation.
• Oversee the development of procedures for the effective identification and management of Intellectual Property
• Hold responsibility for ensuring intellectual policy is protected and opportunities for commercialisation are exploited
• Oversee the delivery of the  Midtech Ltd  contract  as part  of  the wider  embedded WMAHSN membership.
• Use networks and specialist knowledge to seek third party companies and academic partners to develop, research and commercialise ideas
• Use specialist expert knowledge to design and implement strategies to resolve novel and unexpected actual/potential barriers to innovation-related activity
• Safeguard the interests of participants involved in innovation-related activity by ensuring that relevant legislation, guidance and policies are complied with. Work with senior stakeholders to develop and implement new governance processes where needed.
• Provide advice and support to other members of staff with regards to innovation management. Mentor and supervise more junior Innovation team staff, acting as a source of expertise.
• Maintain strong relationships and positive communication channels with other key personnel.
• Provide reports on staff enterprise and associated intellectual property management.
• Utilise networks to spread successful innovation research development to elsewhere within the NHS
• Design, use and maintain electronic systems for managing project status and ensuring all project data is entered and stored appropriately
• Use electronic systems for the design and development of innovative digital tools such as apps

For further details please see the attached job description.