Global Head of Corporate Incubation Lab

SGS is the world’s leading inspection, verification, testing and certification company. SGS is recognized as the global benchmark for quality and integrity. With more than 89,000 employees, SGS operates a network of over 2,400 offices and laboratories around the world. Our Corporate Incubation Lab acts as a catalyst to stimulate innovation and develop a pipeline of successful new ventures within SGS. It provides SGS-built early-stage ventures with the support and guidance they need to develop into a new business.

SGS is an evolving and forward-thinking global company; our 2023 corporate plan will see the investment in new capabilities as well as initiatives to digitize and automate our service and solutions offering. You will help to expand our company’s strategic vision by encouraging the exploration of new areas of research and then helping to commercialise them. The Corporate Incubator Lab launches internal campaigns around SGS’s key innovation theses and validates and builds ventures all the way from Discovery to Scale. Ultimately, you will help SGS to solve problems faster, more cost-effectively and at a lower risk.

More specifically, you will:

• Develop SGS’s Corporate Incubation Lab. You and your team will nurture disruptive ideas with the aim of helping them transform into an independent company with a solid business model;
• Enable SGS to explore business problems faster by and translating them into new disruptive ideas, new business models and new venture opportunities;
• Guide our business units to tap into new markets and stimulate the development of new value propositions;
• Recruit a global team of professional Incubation Coaches with experience in leading start-ups, and corporate incubation;
• Develop and implement SGS’s Incubation Campaigns intended to collect disruptive ideas for new business models around the key components of SGS’s innovation thesis;
• Develop SGS’s venture build program in close coordination with the Digital Innovation Management Team;
• Partner with our Innovation Factory to get business proposals validated by our network of agile Innovation Squads;
• Foster a supportive environment that facilitates innovation by creating, experimenting and learning by failing.

• Educated to degree level;
• Proven experience of leading a corporate incubation lab within a large cooperation. You will be comfortable working within a matrix or complex organizational structure;
• Background of developing and managing your own start-ups. You are an entrepreneur who can detect gaps and demonstrate how SGS can add value;
• Proven leadership skills with the ability to lead, guide and influence C and E-level stakeholders. You can work well under pressure and you are able to challenge the status quo;
• Possess excellent communication skills and are comfortable communicating with people from diverse backgrounds and develop / maintain effective working relationships;
• Excellent knowledge of the following methodology: lean start-up, design thinking, business modelling, agile MVP development (extreme), tech trends analyses and development of innovation thesis.

We are keen to hear from potential candidates based in western Europe. We welcome remote and flexible working.