Senior Director of Global Product Innovation

About the Opportunity

Senior Director of Global Product Innovation within Driscoll’s of the Americas (DOTA) is based in Watsonville, California and will lead Driscoll’s global New Products innovation agenda, identifying the most attractive consumer-led growth opportunities, translating them into prioritized concepts and segment pipeline, and orchestrating cross‑functional delivery from ideation through validation, scale‑up, and go‑to‑market handoff. This leader is the enterprise “conductor” across Consumer, Commercial, R&D/breeding, Nursery, Supply Chain, Quality, IP/Legal, and the four regions (i.e. Americas, EMEA, Asia and Australia New Zealand), ensuring new product segments are designed to win with consumers and customers, feasible to deliver through the value chain, and accretive to grower and enterprise economics.

This leader will work closely with Product Leadership and Commercial teams from the four regions.

Location:

US - Watsonville, California

NOTE:

This is an on‑site role in Watsonville, CA. This position is not authorized for remote employment***

Enterprise innovation strategy & portfolio leadership

• Own the global New Products innovation strategy aligned to enterprise goals and each region’s commercial realities: DOTA, DEMEA, DOA, DANZ
• Build and maintain a global innovation portfolio (segments, platforms, concepts, pilots) that balances near‑term value creation with longer‑horizon bets
• Establish global portfolio governance: decision rights, investment thresholds, prioritization criteria, and kill/scale rules to focus resources on highest‑probability winners

Front‑end innovation engine (Discovery & Ideation)

• Define “opportunity spaces” using consumer insights, cultural trends, category white space, customer strategy, and competitive signals
• Run structured concept generation: design sprints, co‑creation, customer ideation sessions, and cross‑functional “innovation labs” spanning all regions
• Translate opportunity spaces into clear concept briefs (target consumer, occasions, benefit ladder, sensory promise, price‑value hypothesis, channel fit)
• Establish rapid validation loops: sensory tests, concept testing, in‑market pilots, and customer feedback—integrating feasibility constraints from breeding, agronomy, nursery capacity, and supply chain early (no “innovation theater”)
• Curate a global concept pipeline with standardized evidence requirements (consumer desirability, customer viability, technical feasibility, IP pathway, economics)

End‑to‑end Delivery

• Orchestrate cross‑functional work to develop, test, deploy, and scale new product segments globally, with regional deployment plans tailored to DOTA, DEMEA, DOA, DANZ
• Partner with Product Leaders and regional commercial teams to define launch strategy, pricing architecture, assortment logic, and customer sell‑in story
• Ensure a robust go‑to‑market handoff to the Product Business Manager / regional owners with clear playbooks, performance KPIs, and lifecycle plans

Innovation operating system & governance

• Design and embed an end‑to‑end Driscoll’s Global Product Innovation Process:
  Discovery | Concept Ideation | Feasibility | Development | Pilot | Launch | Post Launch Review
• Implement a stage‑gate discipline with agile learning loops (fast evidence, fast decisions), including templates, forums, and standardized scorecards
• Build an enterprise Innovation Dashboard with KPIs (pipeline funnel value, probability‑weighted NPV, trial/repeat proxies, sensory superiority, customer conversion, supply reliability, grower economics, etc.)
• Create a “learning system” after post‑launch reviews to codify best practices across the four regions

Cross‑functional influence (R&D / breeding / nursery / operations)

• Influence R&D and breeding priorities by ensuring the pipeline is anchored in the highest‑value consumer and customer needs and translated into clear “product outcomes” requirements
• Partner with Nursery, Supply Chain, and Quality to ensure scalable operational readiness for new segments (capacity, specs, quality standards, seasonality, risk)
• Ensure IP and legal pathways are considered early (where relevant), to protect value creation while enabling speed

Financ…