Innovation Specialist

U.S. Bank • Minneapolis, MN

3d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Emerging Products team is responsible for identifying, validating, and commercializing new growth opportunities for U.S. Bank. We partner across business lines to discover unmet customer needs, evaluate emerging technologies, develop new business models, and transform promising concepts into scalable products and services. We are seeking an Innovation Specialist to lead opportunities from initial discovery through commercialization readiness. This role combines customer insight, product management, venture building, business strategy, experimentation, and financial analysis. You will work across the enterprise to identify what is next, determine what is worth pursuing, and help build the evidence required to make informed investment decisions. This role aligns to the Emerging Products team's focus on opportunity discovery, experimentation, commercialization, and business-line partnership. The ideal candidate is equally comfortable conducting customer research, facilitating executive discussions, developing financial models, building prototypes, testing assumptions, and influencing strategic decisions. If you're not interested in what's next, this role probably isn't for you. If you aren't energized by learning, experimentation, and solving ambiguous problems, this role probably isn't for you. If you thrive on turning ideas into businesses, we'd love to talk.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent work experience.
• 4+ years of experience in product management, innovation, strategy, venture development, consulting, research, product marketing, or related fields.
• Experience leading initiatives from concept through implementation or commercialization.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and business case development capabilities.
• Experience conducting customer research and translating insights into action.
• Excellent written, verbal, facilitation, and presentation skills.
• Ability to influence outcomes across complex stakeholder environments.
• Demonstrated ability to operate effectively in ambiguity and uncertainty.

Nice To Haves

• Experience within banking, payments, fintech, wealth management, lending, or related financial services industries.
• Experience with Lean Startup, Design Thinking, Jobs to Be Done, Business Model Canvas, and experimentation methodologies.
• Demonstrated success bringing new products, services, or capabilities to market.
• Experience evaluating emerging technologies and translating technology trends into business opportunities.
• AI fluency and familiarity with practical AI applications across customer and business experiences.
• Strong quantitative skills including forecasting, financial modeling, and opportunity sizing.
• Experience working within Agile environments.

Responsibilities

• Discover New Opportunities: Identify unmet customer needs, emerging trends, regulatory shifts, market disruptions, and technology opportunities. Conduct customer research, interviews, market analysis, and competitive assessments. Develop insight-driven opportunity areas aligned to enterprise and business-line priorities. Continuously monitor developments across fintech, banking, AI, data, identity, payments, wealth, and adjacent industries.
• Lead Discovery and Validation: Lead opportunities through the Emerging Products lifecycle, including Explore Backlog, Discovery, Validate, and Accelerate stages. Build Learning Plans and evidence-based validation strategies. Design experiments to test customer desirability, technical feasibility, commercial viability, and operational readiness. Develop and refine value propositions, business models, pricing strategies, and commercialization approaches. Determine when opportunities should advance, pivot, pause, or stop based on evidence.
• Build Concepts and Test Solutions: Lead development of concepts, prototypes, proofs of value, MVPs, pilots, and market tests. Partner with research, design, engineering, operations, legal, risk, marketing, and business-line stakeholders. Translate customer needs and market insights into testable solutions. Establish success metrics and measure outcomes throughout experimentation activities.
• Develop Business Cases and Commercialization Strategies: Create business cases supported by customer, competitive, operational, and financial evidence. Assess TAM, market attractiveness, customer economics, profitability, and growth potential. Develop executive recommendations and investment proposals. Partner with business lines to define ownership, funding, scaling strategies, and transition plans.
• Influence Enterprise Innovation: Facilitate discussions with senior leaders on emerging opportunities and strategic investments. Communicate findings, recommendations, and lessons learned through compelling storytelling and executive-ready presentations. Contribute to the evolution of innovation practices, methodologies, and portfolio management capabilities. Serve as a trusted advisor on emerging customer needs, technologies, and business opportunities.

Benefits

• Healthcare (medical, dental, vision)
• Basic term and optional term life insurance
• Short-term and long-term disability
• Pregnancy disability and parental leave
• 401(k) and employer-funded retirement plan
• Paid vacation (from two to five weeks depending on salary grade and tenure)
• Up to 11 paid holiday opportunities
• Adoption assistance
• Sick and Safe Leave accruals of one hour for every 30 worked, up to 80 hours per calendar year unless otherwise provided by law

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level