United Kingdom · Corporate Strategy · Director/VP (16-20 years)

Director of Innovation & New Ventures

Here is the whole job, in plain words. What it is, a real day, what you decide, how you're judged, how people get here and where they go next. Then the part no course gives you: twelve AI tutors who learn your work.

Experience bandDirector/VP (16-20 years)
Direct reports25-100+ reports
Reports toChief Strategy Officer
UK framework levelUsually a director, accountable for a division and its numbers

Also advertised as VP of Strategic Growth · Head of Corporate Venturing · Innovation Director

Built on an analysis of 43,079 real UK job descriptions · grounded in qualifications employers recognise

Start with a free Future Fluency check, tuned to Director of Innovation & New Ventures

Ten quick questions, one per Future Fluency, asked against this role rather than a generic one. About five minutes, and no card.

Start the check, free

1What this role really is

This role is about finding, building, and scaling the next big things for our company. You're not just thinking about the future; you're actively building it, often from scratch, and then figuring out how to make it a proper business.

2What you'd actually use

The tools this job runs on, and how well you'd need to know each one.

MiroExpert

Championing visual collaboration tools across the enterprise. Integrating Miro into strategic planning offsites and high-level venture design workshops.

Aha!Expert

Managing the entire enterprise innovation portfolio, defining scoring models, and establishing governance workflows for all new ventures.

TableauExpert

Architecting the data strategy for innovation reporting. Presenting Tableau dashboards to the Board to justify portfolio investment and track venture performance.

CB InsightsExpert

Leveraging platform data to shape long-term corporate strategy, identify systemic market shifts, and vet potential M&A targets or strategic partners. Negotiating enterprise licenses.

AsanaExpert

Overseeing the entire program of innovation projects, ensuring resource allocation and strategic alignment across all ventures via portfolio views.

ConfluenceExpert

Designing the knowledge management strategy for capturing and disseminating institutional learning from all innovation projects and new ventures across the organisation.

AnaplanExpert

Modelling the financial impact of the entire innovation portfolio, connecting project funding to long-range corporate financial plans and presenting these to the CFO and Board.

3What you get to decide, and how that grows

Power in a job isn't your title. It's what you're allowed to decide. Here's how it grows as you move up.

The choice	Coming in	Where you are now	The step above
Strategic Direction for New Ventures	No input.	Proposes tactical adjustments to existing venture plans.	Recommends strategic pivots or new market entries for specific projects.
Budget Allocation for Innovation Portfolio	No input.	Suggests minor reallocations within a project budget.	Manages and approves project budgets up to £50K.
Talent Acquisition & Organisational Design	No input.	Participates in interviews for junior roles.	Leads hiring for individual contributor roles, provides input on team structure.
Go/No-Go for Major Ventures	No input.	Provides data and analysis for stage-gate reviews.	Presents project status and recommendations at stage-gate reviews.

4How you'll be judged

The scoreboard, honestly: the hard targets, how often each one is actually looked at, and the quiet human signals that never make it onto a dashboard.

Innovation Portfolio ROI

The financial return on investment across all active innovation projects and new ventures.

Target · Positive ROI within 3-5 years for H2/H3 projects

A new venture launched two years ago is now contributing £5M in annual recurring revenue, having cost £3M to develop and scale.

Percentage of Annual Revenue from Products/Services Launched in the Last 3 Years

This tracks how much of our current income comes from your team's recent successes.

Target · >15%

If our total revenue is £100M, we'd expect at least £15M to come from products or services that didn't exist three years ago.

Time-to-Market for New Ventures

How quickly we can get a new concept from initial idea to generating its first revenue.

Target · < 18 months

A concept identified in January 2024 should ideally be generating revenue by June 2025.

Increase in Organisation's Innovation Maturity Score

An internal assessment of our capabilities in areas like experimentation, idea generation, and strategic alignment.

Target · >10% year-over-year improvement

Moving from a 'Reactive' to a 'Proactive' innovation posture as defined by our internal framework.

Board & C-Suite Engagement

How often the Board and executive team actively seek your input on strategic direction and future growth opportunities.

Invited to contribute to strategic planning sessions, opinions sought on major investment decisions, positive feedback on board presentations.

Quality of M&A Pipeline & Integration

The relevance and potential of the acquisition targets identified by your team, and the smoothness of integrating new ventures.

A well-researched list of potential M&A targets that align with our strategic priorities, successful integration of acquired companies with minimal disruption.

Talent Attraction & Retention within New Ventures

Your ability to attract and keep top talent for the ventures you launch, showing these are exciting and viable career paths.

Low attrition rates in new venture teams, positive feedback in internal surveys, high-calibre candidates applying for roles.

5Would you like it

The honest version. What people enjoy, and what grinds them down.

What people enjoy

Building the Future, Not Just Maintaining the Present

You get a real buzz from seeing a nascent idea evolve into a tangible product or service. You're driven by the challenge of creating something entirely new that adds significant value to the company.

The satisfaction of seeing a new venture, which started as a whiteboard sketch, now has its own team, customers, and revenue.

Strategic Impact & Organisational Transformation

You're motivated by the opportunity to shape the company's long-term direction and see your work influence major strategic decisions. You want to be at the table when the big bets are made.

Successfully advocating for a significant investment in a new technology area that the company had previously ignored, and seeing it become a core pillar of future growth.

Leading & Empowering High-Performing Teams

You enjoy building, mentoring, and guiding diverse teams of innovators, giving them the autonomy to experiment and learn. You're proud of their successes and help them navigate their failures.

Seeing a junior team member you've mentored successfully lead a complex pilot project, or watching your venture leads grow into future business leaders.

What frustrates people

Endless bureaucracy and 'innovation theatre' that looks good on paper but doesn't lead to real business outcomes.
Fighting for budget against established business units that can show predictable, short-term ROI, while your projects are inherently uncertain and long-term.
Having a successful pilot project 'handed over' to a business unit, only for them to starve it of resources or change it beyond recognition.
Being perceived as the 'dreamers in the ivory tower' who don't understand the operational realities and pressures of the core business.
The whiplash of a new CEO or strategy chief arriving and completely changing the definition of 'innovation,' forcing you to scrap 18 months of work.
Explaining to a finance-driven culture that the ROI of a failed experiment is the *learning* it generated, and that 'fast failure' is a feature, not a bug.

What this role does not give you

A quiet life free from internal politics and challenging conversations.
The comfort of working only on well-defined problems with clear solutions.

6Who you work with

This role directly impacts our long-term market position, revenue diversification, and overall competitive advantage. Your success means new growth engines for the business; your failure could mean stagnation or irrelevance.

Inside the business

CEO
Board of Directors
Chief Financial Officer
Chief Marketing Officer
Business Unit General Managers
Legal team

Outside the business

Venture Capital firms
Startup founders
Industry analysts
Strategic partners
Potential M&A targets

7What you need before you start

Not a wish list. The things you would be expected to already have.

Proven track record of successfully launching and scaling multiple new ventures within a corporate setting or as a founder/early employee.
Demonstrated ability to manage P&L responsibility for significant budgets (minimum £2M+).
Extensive experience leading and developing large, diverse teams (25+ people) including managers.
Experience presenting complex strategic initiatives and financial performance to Board-level audiences.
Deep understanding of strategic planning, corporate development, and M&A processes.

8What to practise next

Where the job is going, and what to do about it starting this week.

Ecosystem Orchestration & Platform Strategy

Future ventures will increasingly operate within complex ecosystems, requiring deep understanding of platform business models and how to build, manage, or participate in them. This isn't just about single products anymore.

Network Effects & Multi-Sided Platforms · API Economy & Open Innovation · Partner Lifecycle Management

This quarter: Identify one existing venture that could benefit from a stronger ecosystem play and map out potential partners.
Next 6 months: Lead a workshop on platform business models for your team, bringing in external experts if needed.
Month 7-12: Develop a strategic framework for evaluating new ventures based on their ecosystem potential and network effects.

Quick win: Map out the current ecosystem for one of your existing ventures, identifying gaps and potential collaboration opportunities.

9Staying current once you are in

What people here do to keep up

Regular engagement with the venture capital and startup ecosystem (e.g., attending pitch events, networking with founders).
Continuous learning in emerging technologies (e.g., online courses in AI/ML, blockchain, quantum computing).
Participation in executive education programmes focused on strategic leadership, M&A, or corporate venturing.
Active involvement in industry innovation forums and thought leadership communities.

10How the AI economy is changing work like this

Before we ask anything of you, here's what we can already say about AI and work of this kind:

The new skill this role is being asked for: AI-Driven Strategic Foresight & Sensemaking

The sheer volume of global data and signals makes traditional trend analysis too slow. AI is becoming essential for spotting weak signals, identifying emergent patterns, and synthesising complex information into actionable insights faster than humanly possible.

We'll only ever tell you what we can actually back up. No hype, no scare tactics.

The rising capability

Zavmo analysis

What's rising in its place

This is where the work is heading, and the higher pay with it. Get fluent here and the shift stops being a threat and starts being your edge.

AI-Driven Strategic Foresight & Sensemaking

The sheer volume of global data and signals makes traditional trend analysis too slow. AI is becoming essential for spotting weak signals, identifying emergent patterns, and synthesising complex information into actionable insights faster than humanly possible.

Probabilistic Scenario Planning
Anomaly Detection in Market Data
Ethical AI & Governance in Innovation

What you’ll use

Skills this role draws on

Technical

Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) Framework
Lean Startup Methodology
Business Model Canvas & Value Proposition Design
Design Thinking Leadership
Three Horizons of Growth Strategy
Stage-Gate & Innovation Governance

The pathway

How you actually get there, here

How you become one varies far more by country than what one does. This is the UK route. Most people take one of these ways in; the right one depends on where you're starting from.

1
Principal, Corporate Innovation (L5)
2-4 years at L5
Skills to master
- Deep expertise in a specific innovation domain, managing complex stakeholder relationships, successfully launching 1-2 major H2 ventures.
You're ready to move on when
- Consistently exceeds targets for venture performance
- Recognised as a strategic leader within their domain
- Successfully mentored senior innovation managers
2
Head of Business Unit / General Manager (External or Internal)
3-5 years in a P&L leadership role
Skills to master
- Full P&L management, operational leadership, market entry strategies, scaling businesses from nascent to mature.
You're ready to move on when
- Demonstrable success in driving revenue and profitability
- Strong commercial acumen
- Experience building and leading cross-functional teams
3
Venture Capital Partner / Startup Founder
5-8 years in VC or as a founder
Skills to master
- Deal sourcing and due diligence, investment thesis development, portfolio management, fundraising, building a company from scratch.
You're ready to move on when
- Proven ability to identify high-potential ventures
- Track record of successful investments or exits
- Strong network within the startup ecosystem

11Where this role leads

The long view:This role isn't just a job; it's a launchpad. You'll gain unparalleled experience in building the future of a major company, giving you the credibility and skills to lead at the highest levels, whether that's within our organisation, in a new venture, or elsewhere in the global innovation landscape.

Pay & demand

Pay and demand for this role will appear here, each figure traced to a named authoritative source (e.g. the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, under the Open Government Licence). We don’t show numbers we can’t attribute.

The ten Future Fluencies

Zavmo analysis

The credential is what you can do today. These are what keep you valuable.

A qualification proves you can do the job as it's defined today. These ten are what decide whether you're still the obvious person for it in five years. They're the capabilities employers are now writing into senior roles faster than people are learning them. Zavmo weaves them through whatever you study, so you come out with both: the credential and the fluency.

The highlighted ones are the Fluencies your role leans on hardest, from how Director of Innovation & New Ventures is actually changing. In about two minutes, the free confidence check asks where you stand on each of the ten. That's the whole check, and it's what makes the plan yours rather than generic.

12The team that's yours

No two people are taught the same way. This is one-to-one, not one-to-many.

Zavmo is a hyper-personalised AI learning platform. Twelve virtual tutors, each with a different way of teaching, and one orchestration agent that picks the right one for the moment. So every single lesson is shaped around you, your role, and the way you learn. Not a course everyone sits through. A conversation built for you, and no one else.

…and nine more, matched to you after your first chat. Meet all twelve

Start free and meet yours

13What it feels like

A conversation, not a course

Because your tutor knows your role, your projects and your last session, learning sounds like this. And it's different for every single person:

Develop and Review a Vision for an Enterprise VentureLevel 7

Applied to your work in Director of Innovation & New Ventures

By completing this unit, learners will be able to develop and review a vision for an enterprise venture. This includes achieving buy-in, identifying options, assessing organisational capacity, and evaluating performance impact.

How the thinking builds

Remember
Understand
Apply
Analyse
Evaluate
Create

An illustration of a Zavmo lesson, built from this role’s own route. The unit, its objective and every criterion above are the awarding body’s own words, not an example.

One to one, not one to many

No two people run this the same way

A course is written once and handed to everyone. This is assembled around you, and keeps changing as it learns you. Five things it reads, and what each one changes.

Your actual work Every lesson is taught against a live piece of your own work, not a worked example from a textbook.
What you already know The first conversation finds your starting point, so you skip what you can already do and spend the time on what you cannot.
The conditions you learn under Not a learning-styles quiz. The evidence does not support those. The dimensions the research does back, read once and used to shape the plan.
How far you got last time It picks up mid-thought. The tutor knows what you said, what you struggled with, and what it asked you to try.
Which tutor suits the moment Twelve of them, each for a different kind of thinking. The one who walks you through a first idea is not the one who stress-tests it.

See how you learn, free. Eight questions, no sign-up. A directional taster; the diagnostic inside Zavmo goes deeper and keeps adapting.

DemonstrateIllustration

Evidenced on your work in Director of Innovation & New Ventures

You do not finish by watching something. You finish by showing it on the work you already do, against the measures this job is judged on.

Innovation Portfolio ROIThe financial return on investment across all active innovation projects and new ventures.A new venture launched two years ago is now contributing £5M in annual recurring revenue, having cost £3M to develop and scale.Positive ROI within 3-5 years for H2/H3 projects
Percentage of Annual Revenue from Products/Services Launched in the Last 3 YearsThis tracks how much of our current income comes from your team's recent successes.If our total revenue is £100M, we'd expect at least £15M to come from products or services that didn't exist three years ago.>15%
Time-to-Market for New VenturesHow quickly we can get a new concept from initial idea to generating its first revenue.A concept identified in January 2024 should ideally be generating revenue by June 2025.< 18 months
Increase in Organisation's Innovation Maturity ScoreAn internal assessment of our capabilities in areas like experimentation, idea generation, and strategic alignment.Moving from a 'Reactive' to a 'Proactive' innovation posture as defined by our internal framework.>10% year-over-year improvement

These are this job's own measures, with its own targets. Nothing is marked evidenced, because nobody has started this yet. Yours would fill in from the work you bring.

Your passport

This isn't a certificate you file away. It's a passport to the life you're designing.

Every credit you earn and every fluency you build adds up: evidence where it counts, carried with you. Zavmo keeps the map: where you are, where you're heading, and the next step, at your pace, around your life. From Director of Innovation & New Ventures to Chief Innovation Officer (CINO) (L7), and whatever you decide comes after.

Level 7 · in progressAI Fluency→ Chief Innovation Officer (CINO) (L7)→ your design

Where this takes you

This role isn't just a job; it's a launchpad. You'll gain unparalleled experience in building the future of a major company, giving you the credibility and skills to lead at the highest levels, whether that's within our organisation, in a new venture, or elsewhere in the global innovation landscape.

See Your Progress GrowIllustration

Director of Innovation & New Ventures

Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) Framework
Lean Startup Methodology
Business Model Canvas & Value Proposition Design
Design Thinking Leadership
Three Horizons of Growth Strategy
Stage-Gate & Innovation Governance

This is your Mind Palace on learn.zavmo.ai. Every skill above comes from this role's own record, not an example borrowed from another job. A node lights up when you evidence it, and what you build stays yours between jobs. That is the part a course cannot do.

14The detail, folded away

Everything else the record holds

The career branches in full, how AI is already showing up in the day-to-day, and the questions people ask about this job. Here when you want them, out of the way while you decide.

Where it leads next, rung by rung

Where it leads

The career path, and where it branches

Director of Innovation & New Ventures is a start, not a ceiling. Each step below asks for new skills and hands back more autonomy.

Chief Innovation Officer (CINO) (L7)
3-5 years as Director
From L6 to L7
- Shaping company-wide culture
- Driving market-shaping initiatives
- Leading large-scale organisational change
- Managing external partnerships at a strategic level
Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) (L7)
4-6 years as Director
From L6 to L7
- Overseeing all corporate development
- Leading major strategic initiatives beyond innovation
- Managing relationships with institutional investors
- Shaping the company's long-term competitive advantage

Working with AI on the job

Working with AI

Where AI is starting to help

As Director of Innovation, your time is precious. You're constantly balancing long-term vision with immediate venture needs. What if you could offload some of the heavy lifting, giving you more time to think, lead, and make those critical strategic bets?

AI isn't just for junior analysts anymore. It's becoming a powerful co-pilot for senior leaders, helping you cut through noise, accelerate decision-making, and even anticipate market shifts. We're building an internal AI Hub to put these tools directly in your hands, letting you focus on what truly matters: shaping our future.

Automated Strategic Foresight

Use advanced AI agents to continuously scan global markets, patent databases, and academic research for emerging technologies and disruptive trends. Get a curated, synthesised report weekly, highlighting potential threats and opportunities that might otherwise take weeks of manual research. This frees you up to interpret the signals, not just collect them.

Rapid Venture Business Case Generation

Feed an LLM with initial market data, competitor analysis, and internal cost estimates. It'll quickly generate a first-pass SWOT, TAM/SAM/SOM sizing, and a list of key strategic assumptions for your new ventures. This drastically reduces the time spent on initial drafting, letting your team jump straight to validating the core hypotheses.

Accelerated Portfolio Risk Assessment

Upload all your innovation project data—experiment results, market feedback, financial projections—into an AI model. It can help identify patterns, flag underperforming ventures, and even suggest potential pivots or resource reallocations across your portfolio, helping you make more data-driven 'kill or persevere' decisions faster.

Board-Ready Communication Tailoring

Craft your core message for a new venture update, then use an LLM to instantly adapt it for different high-level audiences. Generate a concise, ROI-focused summary for the Board, a detailed risk assessment for the Audit Committee, or an inspiring vision for an all-hands meeting. This ensures your message resonates without you spending hours on re-writes.

Common questions

How do you become a Director of Innovation & New Ventures?

Common routes in include Principal, Corporate Innovation (L5) (2-4 years at L5), Head of Business Unit / General Manager (External or Internal) (3-5 years in a P&L leadership role) and Venture Capital Partner / Startup Founder (5-8 years in VC or as a founder). Times vary with prior experience.

Where can a Director of Innovation & New Ventures progress to?

This role can lead on to Chief Innovation Officer (CINO) (L7) (3-5 years as Director) and Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) (L7) (4-6 years as Director), depending on the skills you build.

What level is a Director of Innovation & New Ventures in the UK?

This role aligns to RQF Level 7 on the UK framework, a guide to the depth of qualification it maps to, not a hard entry bar.

What new skills matter most for a Director of Innovation & New Ventures?

Increasingly, AI-Driven Strategic Foresight & Sensemaking. These are the areas where the higher-paid, future-proof work is heading.

The honest bit

You’ve started things before

Most of them were built for a room full of people who aren’t you. A cohort moves on whether or not your week allowed it, and by the third week the thing you’re behind on becomes the reason you stop opening it.

There’s no cohort here, and no timetable to fall behind. Before anything starts, Zavmo asks when you’re sharpest and how long you can realistically sit down for, then builds the sessions around those answers. A bad fortnight changes your pace. It doesn’t put you behind.

And you only pay once you start learning. Searching and planning are free, and you can cancel any time — so the cost of finding out is an afternoon, not a year.

What it costs

Less than one coaching session. Every month.

A single career-coaching hour costs more than a month of this, and it ends when the hour does. Zavmo doesn't. It's £70 a month, about £2.30 a day, for a companion that knows Director of Innovation & New Ventures, works on the job you actually do, and keeps going at your pace rather than a timetable's.

Searching and planning stay free. You only pay when you start learning.
Your credits are yours. Regulated, and they don't vanish when a subscription ends.
Cancel any time and billing stops. No notice period, no minimum term.

Your path, personalised

You have the map. Walking it is the part we do together.

This route runs to 1 national skill standard. That is a real journey.

Zavmo shapes a learning experience as unique as you are. It fits how you learn, your pace and the work you already do. Every step stays benchmarked to recognised national standards. That’s the plan for becoming a Director of Innovation & New Ventures: personal to you, and it still counts. The first steps are free.

Independent research finds well-designed intelligent tutoring performs nearly as well as one-to-one human tutoring: VanLehn (2011), Educational Psychologist.

A private tutor in the UK averages £35–40 an hour . Zavmo is £70/month.

A Zavmo curriculum screen: a three-month plan of nine units, ninety credits, each one an Ofqual-regulated unit the learner can tick or untick before starting. — A real plan on learn.zavmo.ai: Ofqual-regulated units, credits, and a three-month run at your own pace.

Start free No commitment. See your first steps free.

15Where to go from here

Other roles at Level 7

Same depth of qualification, different job. Useful if the work appeals but this particular role does not.

Other roles in Corporate Strategy

Stay in the field you know and move sideways rather than up.

If you leave this industry

Your deep understanding of market dynamics, venture creation, and strategic growth makes you highly mobile across different sectors, particularly in technology, financial services, and any industry undergoing significant disruption. The skills you build here are fundamentally transferable.

Not sure this is the right direction?

Work out what you actually want from work first, then come back and see which roles fit it. Takes about ten minutes.

You're not behind. You're right on time. The shift is only just beginning. Your role won't look the same in two years. Be the one who leads the change, not the one it happens to. Build my plan, free Here's the first ten minutes: a 2-minute confidence check → your personalised roadmap → meet the tutors matched to you. No card, cancel any time. No card. Build your plan, see your roadmap and meet the twelve tutors matched to you. All free. When you're ready to start learning, it's £70 a month, billed monthly. Cancel any time and billing stops.

Director of Innovation & New Ventures

What's rising in its place

AI-Driven Strategic Foresight & Sensemaking

Skills this role draws on

Technical

How you actually get there, here

Principal, Corporate Innovation (L5)

Head of Business Unit / General Manager (External or Internal)

Venture Capital Partner / Startup Founder

The credential is what you can do today. These are what keep you valuable.

Roles this leads to

No two people are taught the same way. This is one-to-one, not one-to-many.

A conversation, not a course

No two people run this the same way

This isn't a certificate you file away. It's a passport to the life you're designing.

Everything else the record holds

The career path, and where it branches

Chief Innovation Officer (CINO) (L7)

Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) (L7)

Where AI is starting to help

Automated Strategic Foresight

Rapid Venture Business Case Generation

Accelerated Portfolio Risk Assessment

Board-Ready Communication Tailoring

Common questions

You’ve started things before

Less than one coaching session. Every month.

You have the map. Walking it is the part we do together.