Director, Research & Development, Commercial Growth Initiatives

Vizient•Chicago, IL

3d•$102,400 - $179,000

About The Position

The Commercial Growth Initiatives (CGI) team sits within Vizient's Research & Development (R&D) group and leads upstream innovation and product strategy: identifying, shaping, and de-risking new growth opportunities that help healthcare organizations solve complex, high-impact problems. We connect unmet healthcare needs with Vizient's distinctive assets, shaping credible solution concepts and determining which opportunities are strong enough for R&D to pursue. We're looking for a strong individual contributor to execute innovation and product strategy for early-stage opportunities, helping determine whether an emerging problem is real, valuable, fundable, strategically credible, and capable of becoming a strong growth opportunity for Vizient. This is not a product management, implementation, or program delivery role. It is hands-on upstream strategy work that combines healthcare judgment, structured analysis, customer discovery, market assessment, and clear synthesis to help Vizient R&D decide what to pursue further. Reporting to the VP of Commercial Growth Initiatives, you'll work at the point where unmet healthcare needs, market signals, and Vizient's unique assets come together to shape what R&D pursues next. This is a high-leverage role for someone who wants to help build conviction through evidence, translate ambiguity into clear opportunity cases, and contribute to a pipeline of opportunities that solve important healthcare problems and expand where Vizient can create durable value.

Requirements

7 or more years of experience required.
Healthcare fluency from provider operations, healthcare consulting, health tech, payer/provider strategy, or healthcare analytics.
Experience evaluating early-stage ideas, new offerings, emerging markets, customer problems, or investment cases before formal build or delivery.
Ability to distinguish a compelling problem from an interesting idea and define the evidence that makes it a defensible opportunity.
Skill in turning ambiguous ideas into structured questions, research plans, and analysis.
Experience building market maps, value models, customer discovery summaries, problem statements, competitive assessments, decision memos, and investment recommendations.
Comfort moving between market research, customer discovery, economic logic, operational reality, and executive synthesis.
Customer-centered mindset.
Practical judgment, intellectual honesty, and a collaborative approach to navigating ambiguity and differing perspectives.
Initiative to anticipate issues and keep work moving without perfect direction.
Willingness to travel.

Nice To Haves

Relevant degree preferred. MBA or equivalent graduate business training is a plus.
Experience in healthcare-focused venture analysis or management consulting, or extensive health system operations highly preferred.
Experience in product or growth strategy in health tech, fintech, or AdTech is a plus.

Responsibilities

Support early-stage growth work by deeply understanding healthcare problems and helping shape solutions that take advantage of Vizient's unique assets, relationships, data, and market position.
Develop product and business theses by connecting customer pain, market dynamics, operational reality, economic value, and Vizient's strategic position.
Bring an external market perspective to early-stage ideas, including how health systems make decisions, what buyers value, where budgets may sit, and how alternatives compete.
Conduct research, interviews, and working sessions with internal stakeholders, health system leaders, operators, subject matter experts, and external market participants.
Build the evidence base for whether an opportunity is meaningful, fundable, differentiated, and credible enough for Vizient R&D to pursue further.
Identify the core assumptions, risks, and open questions that should determine whether an opportunity advances, changes direction, or stops.
Translate research, interviews, market analysis, and internal expertise into concise problem statements, opportunity narratives, and recommendation materials.
Maintain meticulous documentation of evidence, assumptions, stakeholder input, decisions, and open questions so recommendations can be reviewed, challenged, and handed off cleanly.
Work across internal and external partners to keep assessment work grounded, practical, and moving.
Help improve how the team evaluates, communicates, and prioritizes early-stage commercial growth opportunities as the function scales.