About The Role

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Innovation Portfolio Planning: Define and maintain a platform-level innovation portfolio of products and projects aligned with Life Sciences China’s strategic plan. Develop 3-5 year roadmaps that identify cross-Opco growth opportunities, strategic innovation initiatives, and their implementation sequencing.
Path-to-Execution Design: Translate strategic objectives into executable project pathways by breaking down broad goals into specific innovation themes, product concepts, and development projects. Design stage-gated plans (with key milestones, resources, risk mitigation steps) to validate and scale these projects.
Cross-OpCo Orchestration & Execution Leadership: Coordinate cross-Opco project teams to drive innovative solutions from concept to market. Establish ad hoc cross-functional agile teams with members from multiple Opcos and functions (R&D, Marketing, Supply Chain, etc.) to conduct rapid concept validation and accelerated development of strategic innovations. Provide hands-on leadership to these teams through the 0→1 and 1→10 phases of development, ensuring projects meet defined milestones and quality standards.
Innovation Governance & Portfolio Management: Implement a platform-wide innovation governance mechanism to monitor and manage the portfolio of strategic innovation projects. Lead regular portfolio reviews to assess progress, reprioritize initiatives, resource constraints, and ROI. Recommend adjustments such as reallocation of funding or termination of projects with insufficient promise, to optimize the overall innovation pipeline.
Resource & Stakeholder Alignment: Work with Opco GMs and functional leaders to secure required resources (budget, talent, technology) for platform innovation initiatives. Serve as the point of coordination across Opcos, aligning priorities and negotiating commitments to ensure the platform’s strategic initiatives are adequately supported and integrated into Opco plans.
Deliverable Handover & Scaling: Define clear handover criteria for each innovation project when moving from platform-led incubation to Opco-led execution. Once new solutions are proven viable, oversee their transition and integration into the appropriate Opco or new business unit for scale-up and sustained growth, thereby ensuring a seamless from strategy to business handoff.

Key Deliverable

Platform Innovation Portfolio Roadmap: A multi-year (3–5 year) plan articulating the key cross-OpCo innovation initiatives and building a clear innovation pipeline aligned to the platform’s strategic growth priorities. This includes the list of prioritized innovation projects, target outcomes, timeline (milestones/Tollgates), and broad resource allocation.
Strategic Initiative Execution Plans: For each major strategic innovation theme or initiative, a comprehensive execution plan or charter detailing scope, approach (e.g., product development vs partnership vs acquisition), stage gates, and required resources and partnerships. These plans serve as decision support for leadership buy-in and as the foundational reference for project teams.
Cross-Opco Project Progress Reports: Periodic reports summarizing progress of the platform innovation portfolio, including achievements, upcoming milestones, risk/issue status, and any decisions needed. This ensures that platform leadership has clear visibility into the strategic projects and can measure execution against the strategic plan.

EDUCATION / EXPERIENCE

Advanced degree in Life Sciences, Clinical Medicine, Chemistry, or related disciplines; MBA strongly preferred.
Domain Expertise: Familiarity with Life Sciences industry or related technology sectors is a significant advantage, enabling you to shape credible innovation opportunities and understand market dynamics.
Experience: Minimum 10+ years of professional experience, with demonstrated background in strategic planning, new product development (NPD) lifecycles, or corporate innovation management. At least 5 years in leadership roles driving multi-functional or cross-business innovation initiatives from concept to implementation.
Strategic & Analytical Skills: Proven ability to break down broad strategic goals into actionable plans. Experience in portfolio management or program management of complex, multi-year initiatives is essential.
Cross-functional Leadership: Strong track record of leading matrix teams across different functions/Opcos to deliver complex projects. Exceptional influencing and communication skills to align diverse stakeholders without direct authority.
Innovator’s Mindset: Curiosity and a balanced risk appetite – comfortable operating within ambiguity and skilled at de-risking new business ideas through structured experiments. Strong bias for action, combined with the patience to build systems and processes for long-term sustainable innovation.

SUCCESS MEASUREMENT

Strategy Implementation Rate: Proportion of strategic innovation initiatives successfully launched into execution, indicating how effectively platform strategies are being converted into actionable projects.
Innovation Portfolio Progress & ROI: Milestone adherence and value realization of the platform innovation portfolio – e.g., percentage of projects achieving TG milestones on time and incremental pipeline value (IPV) delivered across Opcos from these initiatives.
Cross-Opco Synergy: Measurable reduction in overlap or gaps among Opco-level innovation efforts due to platform coordination (e.g., combined projects or resource-sharing), reflecting improved resource efficiency and collaboration.
Successful Handover & Scale-Up: Number of platform-led innovation projects that successfully transition to permanent Opco ownership and achieve initial KPIs (market launch, revenue or cost targets, etc.), demonstrating the role’s effectiveness in seeing initiatives through to business impact.

FUNCTIONAL COMPETENCY

Strategic Vision and Execution: Possesses a clear strategic mindset with the ability to anticipate future challenges, define impactful goals, and create actionable roadmaps to achieve organizational objectives in a dynamic market.
Results Orientation: Demonstrates a strong focus on achieving measurable outcomes by prioritizing tasks effectively, overcoming obstacles, and ensuring successful delivery of high-impact projects.
Agility and Adaptability: Thrives in complex and fast-changing environments, showing the flexibility to adapt strategies, processes, and approaches in response to evolving market and organizational needs.
Influence and Stakeholder Management: Excels in building and maintaining trust-based relationships with internal and external stakeholders, leveraging strong communication and negotiation skills to align interests and drive collaborative success.
Problem Solving and Decision Making: Tackles complex challenges with a structured and analytical approach, quickly identifying root causes and implementing innovative, sustainable solutions that balance short- and long-term goals.
Leadership and Collaboration: Inspires and unites cross-functional teams around shared objectives, fostering an environment of trust, accountability, and high performance while developing future leaders in the organization.

Join our winning team today. Together, we’ll accelerate the real-life impact of tomorrow’s science and technology. We partner with customers across the globe to help them solve their most complex challenges, architecting solutions that bring the power of science to life.

For more information, visit www.danaher.com .