Design Strategy Lead and Innovation Manager

Title: Design Strategy Lead and Innovation Manager

Company: Samsung Research America (SRA)

Lab: Research & Development Innovation

Location: Mountain View, CA

Position Summary:

The Technology Partnerships Manager is responsible for developing partnerships and formulating strategies that deliver innovative solutions to consumer pain-points, while aligning with business needs to help foster the Samsung device ecosystem.

Our Open Innovation team combines the best of Samsung product expertise to create radically futuristic and innovative products, services and experiences to delight our customers.

We research, identify, partner and promote new technologies to make our consumer’s experience with our devices better, faster, seamless, more powerful, and multi-dimensional across different product categories. Our goal is to improve people’s lifestyles through technology advancement and experience enrichment.

You will work with a cross-functional team supporting different product business units, developing business cases, fostering partnerships, and driving pivotal initiatives to grow our business.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Manage existing relationships with external partners to facilitate ongoing discussions and evaluations with R&D labs
• Communicate key value propositions of partner technologies to executives and lab leaders at SRA and in Samsung R&D
• Understand market trends and perform market research to acquire domain expertise in multiple industries and core technologies that are relevant to Samsung’s business units
• Recommend new markets, products and features aligned with evolving industry trends, supported by qualitative and quantitative justification
• Coordinate cross-functional and cross-geo team activities, setting project milestones, and motivating teams to meet project timelines and deliverables
• Proactively address ambiguity through strategic thinking followed by tactical execution
• Form a clear understanding of team priorities to balance urgent vs. daily activities
• Identify customers pain-points and business needs
• Lead and drive successful partnership strategies and launches, and sustaining positive relationships with clients, partners and stakeholders
• Build concepts and define new user experiences working with partners for new opportunities
• Be the internal champion for partner’s strategic goals and vision and advocate their needs to stakeholders ensuring awareness and understanding through effective communication

Background and Experience Required:

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering required, and post-graduate (MS or MBA) degree strongly preferred
• Minimum five years of business development or product management experience in a technology company
• Domain expert level understanding of the latest technologies in new materials & core components such as sensors, optics, chips, etc. that enable next-generation consumer electronics products
• Proven ability to understand emerging technologies, including but not limited to robotics, sensors, AI, mobile communications, and AR/VR
• Effective interpersonal and relationship management skills
• Experience in leading complex, multi-team and cross-geographic projects to success
• Excellent written, verbal communications and presentation skills
• Ability to deal with ambiguity associated with working in a fast-paced and changing environment
• Must be willing to travel as needed (20%)