Internal relations:
This role requires intensive and extensive cross functional engagement and collaboration. Working with Procurement Department is a constant engagement, not only for ensuring the timeline of component parts delivery, but also for knowledge and updates on industry new materials, techniques and innovation news. Then, in order to commercialize a new product, it involves from Blender, Product Champion, Quality Assurance for product development; Manufacturing and Supply Chain Department for commercial production on time in full; Finance Department for product costing and margin implication for the business; to Legal Department for trademark and product standard registration; and Marketing & Trade/Sales for the actual deployment of the launch in the market and consumer campaigns. Moreover, the role will also need to get exposed to the Top Senior Management for direction alignment and strategic discussion around new product/category in the pipeline planning.

External relations:
This role will majorly work with external agencies specialized in packaging designing. Also, it would involve working with the production/supplier partner of bottle, label printing, cap production. In order to keep updated of the new trends in the industry, constantly keeping in touch with industry experts (i.e. flavor suppliers, blending experts, consumer research and insight agencies, etc.) is highly recommended.

Overall Responsibility
Innovation:
This role plays a key part in driving the innovation pipeline for the organization. It starts with understanding consumer insights, market trends and identifying potential gaps. The role will then propose a short-term and long-term pipeline plan for the company to fill the market gaps and seek for growth opportunities.
On a regular basis, he/she also needs to stay updated of the latest trends and innovation news happening in the industry, the market and the surrounding regions in order to keep refreshing the pipeline plan with most relevant and potential ideas.
Year-on-year basis, he/she needs to build an innovation-driven culture for the organization through organizing innovation workshops/ trend updating sessions and driving the Innovation-journey process (Stage Gate) enforcement.

New product development:
When a new idea is fixed and firmed by the Top Senior Management, this NPD role will be the key driving force from idea to commercialization of the new product. This is done by coordinating with cross functional teams from Procurement, QA, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Finance to Legal, Marketing, Sales for their corresponding responsibilities and expertise.
He/she will be the custodian of NPD Meetings to align cross functions on the new projects and progress tracking to ensure on time in full launch according to Management expectation.
This role will also be responsible to establish and ensure a robust consumer-centric approach to validate and filter the innovation journey from ideation to commercialization and post launch performance tracking. This involves working with Marketing Research and external research agencies to build and apply relevant toolkits and guidelines for proper consumer understanding, validation and assessment of the ideas, concepts, new products developed, till market forecasting and launch tracking.

Key Areas of Accountability
Innovation pipelining and process driving
New product development and commercialization
Consumer-centric journey of innovation development
Market trends, innovation news and consumer lifestyle trends update