Principal Innovation & Partnership Lead, Displays Solutions

HP•Palo Alto, CA

About The Position

Principal Innovation & Partnership Lead, Displays Solutions Description - The displays and docking group innovation team has a mandate to explore and validate transformative innovations in core and adjacent businesses to deliver significant value creation, value capture and evolution to a multibillion-dollar business. The Principal Innovation Lead will work closely with the Director of Innovation, Strategy, Product Management and Engineering and have responsibilities that fall into 2 primary areas: First, to define strategic direction, map out competitive landscapes and value chains, define sustained differentiation, advocate for funding and executive support and drive meaningful innovation of new products and technology ventures. Second, to lead scouting, building, and establishing relationships with Enterprise and startup partners for market validation, joint go to market, product and solution development, hypothesis testing, prototyping and joint go to market. The Principal role is expected to lead the journey from zero to one—from concept to piloted MVP to commercial-scale deployment.

Requirements

Four-year or Graduate Degree in Marketing, Business Administration, or any other related discipline or commensurate work experience or demonstrated competence.
7+ years in technology innovation, product management, R&D.
4+ years experience in management consulting or corporate incubation
3+ years in partnerships or strategic alliances
4+ years in product management
Proven track record of incubating and launching digital prototypes scaling HW based, SW enhanced, SaaS, AI/ML or platform products
Strong comfort with AI and digital design tools. Hands on experience in design sprints and UX research, A/B testing, product market fit validation and tools
Strong connections in startup community.
Experience leading cross functional, technical teams and structuring joint technical, GTM, or alliance collaborations
Experience with open innovation, hackathons, tech scouting
Value Chain & Ecosystem Mapping: The ability to deconstruct complex industries to identify where value is shifting—especially as displays move from "passive output" to "intelligent hubs."
Competitive Intelligence (Beyond Direct Peers): Identifying threats and opportunities from non-traditional competitors (e.g., software giants moving into hardware or silicon providers moving into solutions).
Blue Ocean Strategy: Knowledge of how to create uncontested market space in "adjacent" businesses rather than just competing on specs in the core business.
Lean Startup & Hypothesis-Driven Development: Mastery of the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop. You must know how to design experiments that invalidate bad ideas quickly and cheaply.
MVP Design & Prototyping: Understanding the minimum requirements to test a value proposition without over-engineering the hardware or software.
Commercial Scaling & Go-To-Market (GTM): Knowledge of how to transition a pilot into a formal product line, including channel strategy, pricing models, and sales enablement.
Business Model Innovation: Moving beyond "one-time hardware sales" to recurring revenue, SaaS-plus-hardware models, or data-as-a-service.
Unit Economics & Financial Modeling: Ability to build "venture-style" business cases that account for risk, lifetime value (LTV), and customer acquisition cost (CAC).
Funding & Resource Orchestration: Skill in "selling" a vision to internal stakeholders to secure the capital and headcount necessary to move a project forward.
Open Innovation & Scouting: Navigating the startup ecosystem (VCs, accelerators, universities) to find technologies that bridge your internal capability gaps.
Partnership Architecture: Knowing how to structure Joint Development Agreements (JDAs) or pilot programs that protect IP while remaining attractive to smaller, agile partners.
Enterprise Relationship Management: The ability to engage with Senior executives at "Enterprise Partners" to co-create solutions and validate market demand.
Executive Storytelling: Translating complex technical innovations into a compelling "so what?" for the Director and VP levels.
Stakeholder Alignment: Balancing the conflicting priorities of Engineering (feasibility), Product Management (roadmap), and Finance (ROI).
Ambiguity Tolerance: The mental resilience to lead a project through "the messy middle" where the path to commercialization isn't yet clear.

Nice To Haves

Ideally located in or around San Francisco, Seattle, New York or Boston

Responsibilities

Identify and assess emerging technologies (AI, SaaS, IoT, etc.), manage relationships with deep tech startups, and source external innovation opportunities.
Lead the end-to-end digital product design lifecycle—from research and wireframing to high-fidelity UI/UX, using tools like Figma, Sketch, and collaborating with agile teams.
Define and run testable MVPs and technology pilots, leveraging agile, lean startup, and DevOps methodologies to iterate quickly.
Conduct rigorous user testing, analytics reviews, and data-driven market validation, using metrics like retention, engagement, and NPS.
Create playbooks to transition successful pilots into scale-ready digital products and manage technical handoffs to core business or product teams.
Structure and manage pilots, joint-development agreements, and co-innovation programs with highly technical partners and venture-backed startups.
Landscape, scout, engage and manage enterprise partner relationships and joint solution experiences
Build a network of collaborators—including VCs, accelerators, university labs, and ecosystem partners—for continuous pipeline sourcing.
Coach cross-functional teams on best practices; stay ahead of software, cloud, AI, and digital platform trends.
Set and track KPIs, manage incubator budgets, and develop business cases for investment in promising tech pilots.