Associate Director of Product Innovation

Associate Director of Product Innovation

Position Title:
Associate Director of Product Innovation
Work Location:
East Hanover, NJ 07936
Assignment Duration: 12 Months
Work Arrangement:
Hybrid (3 days onsite / 2 days remote)

Position Summary:

• Reporting to the Executive Director, CRM Labs, the Associate Director, CRM Innovation Labs supports the strategy, development, and execution of CRM Labs priorities across shaping, prototyping, and proof-of-concept activities.
• This role tactically implements the CRM Labs iterative innovation model by translating demand into disciplined experimentation that validates business value, user experience, and technical feasibility before enterprise commitment.

Background & Context:

• The Associate Director partners closely with Product Owners, business stakeholders, IT, architecture, engineering, UX, analytics, privacy, legal, and compliance teams to run rapid, evidence-based cycles that refine, advance, or off-ramp ideas quickly and transparently while ensuring successful concepts are positioned for transition into scaled delivery through standard product road mapping and production processes.

Key Responsibilities:

• Execute the CRM Labs model:
  Run work through structured, timeboxed stages including ideation support, shaping, prototyping, review and decision, and proof-of-concept readiness.
• Lead tactical implementation of rapid prototyping:
  Plan and oversee prototype iterations with a time boxed life cycles, ensuring disciplined scope and clear endpoints.
• Translate opportunities into testable concepts:
  Partner with Product Owners, business stakeholders, and technical teams to define value hypotheses, assumptions, success criteria, and practical build plans.
• Drive evidence-based decision making:
  Capture learnings from each cycle and prepare recommendations to refine, advance to proof of concept, or off-ramp initiatives based on business value, technical signal, and enterprise readiness.
• Coordinate cross-functional execution:
  Work across CRM Product, IT, architecture, engineering, UX, analytics, privacy, legal, security, and compliance teams to ensure experimentation is feasible, governed, and aligned to enterprise standards.
• Support proof-of-concept planning and transition:
  Clarify scope, dependencies, risks, governance needs, user involvement, and enterprise gates required to test in real environments.
• Protect production capacity and enterprise investment:
  Ensure Lab work remains focused on de-risking and does not become shadow delivery, unmanaged customization, or parallel production execution.
• Document and operationalize learnings:
  Produce concise outputs including findings, decision logs, opportunity assessments, prototype outcomes, and recommendations that inform product roadmap and scaled delivery decisions.
• Maintain governance, privacy, and compliance:
  Follow established guardrails for privacy, security, compliance, and data usage, especially as initiatives progress from prototype into proof of concept.
• Partner in demand intake and prioritization:
  Support regular triage of ideas from leadership, Product, business and field teams, DDIT, and lab-sourced opportunities, helping assess fit, readiness, and strategic value.
• Stay informed and bring back to The Organization the state of the art across enterprise CRM, generative AI, Agentic AI, deterministic AI, and data products.

Qualification &

Experience:

• The Organization seeks an accomplished innovation and product delivery leader with experience and demonstrated success translating emerging CRM opportunities into structured experiments, actionable learnings, and informed decisions regarding scale for commercial operations. Strong partnership, execution discipline, and intellectual maturity are needed. A comprehensive understanding of best practices in CRM, Data, and AI-enabled customer engagement is important to success in this role.

Additional qualifications are as follows:

• Proven success executing rapid experimentation, prototyping, or proof-of-concept work that tests business value and feasibility before larger-scale investment
• 6+ years of experience in CRM, product management, innovation delivery, consulting, technology strategy, or related leadership roles, preferably in the pharmaceutical, healthcare, or CRM sectors
• Strong understanding of the CRM landscape (Sales, Marketing, and Service), including Salesforce (Agentforce, Data Cloud, core platform), Veeva, and adjacent technologies in the customer engagement ecosystem
• Understanding of CRM, AI, and data…