Manager, Innovation

Kinder's•Walnut Creek, CA

4d•$140,000 - $150,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Kinder's is a privately held, founder-led CPG company that is a top-five brand in multiple flavor categories at Costco, Walmart, and Whole Foods. As they expand globally and approach $1 billion in revenue, they are seeking smart-and-scrappy, flavor-obsessed individuals to join their team. This role offers the opportunity to see the real impact of your work and contribute to adding flavor to millions of meals and lives. The Innovation Manager will be responsible for working with key cross-functional stakeholders to generate, launch, evaluate, and optimize new growth opportunities for Kinder's and its associated partner brands. This role will partner with the Director of Innovation and the broader organization to deliver a strategic pipeline of high-growth opportunities that provide a unique and compelling innovation capability to consumers and customers, driving sustainable value.

Requirements

Bachelor's Degree required
5+ years relevant work experience in CPG innovation or growth strategy
Experience as a strategic thinker and developing business cases and corresponding execution plans.
Experience in identifying consumer needs and motivations through research and / or market analysis.
Track record of creative thinking, generation of new product ideas, and working with internal and external partners to develop new concepts / products.
Experience working with and leading cross-functional teams.
Strong analytical & quantitative skills with capability to use data and / or research to make insight-based arguments to drive organizational alignment.
Strong project management skills and understanding of new product development process from ideation to commercialization to in-market activation.

Nice To Haves

MBA preferred
Brand management and product marketing experience is a plus
Knowledge of key syndicated data providers (Circana, Numerator preferred)

Responsibilities

Demonstrate a deep understanding of consumer needs and motivations and translate into actionable insights.
Proactively identify consumer, customer, market and macro trends and contextualize these into growth opportunities.
Closely partner with the insights & analytics team to develop and execute learning action plans to evaluate and develop target opportunities.
Develop business cases for key innovation projects and support leadership in aligning on key go/no-go decisions.
Build business plans for key innovation programs including development of strategic rationale, evaluation of consumer and customer need / white-space, coordination of technical evaluation (e.g. product development, packaging, or manufacturing hurdles), development of pack / pricing strategy, and evaluation of key financial characteristics (e.g. sales opportunity, margin profile).
Support innovation categories with interim brand management support until programs are turned over to the CORE brand management team.
Activate strategic go-to-market plans for new opportunities and work with cross-functional stakeholders to drive alignment around execution needs including establishing business and financial objectives.
Drive internal & external alignment around key programs and support customer engagements on new projects including partnering with the sales organization and developing sell-in materials.
Evaluate in-market performance post-launch through analysis of key data sources and communicate findings internally and drive alignment on any optimization opportunities in real-time.
Collaborate with and cross-functional teams to overcome executional and logistical hurdles to meet aggressive in-market timing and coordinate product and packaging solutions that lead the market.
Support alignment on the growth initiatives with key cross-functional stakeholders including Brand Marketing, Product Development, Finance, Operations and Sales.
Develop and present relevant business updates to executive leadership.