UK

United Kingdom · Innovation · Principal/Manager (12-16 years)

Manager, Innovation & New Ventures

Here is the whole job, in plain words. What it is, 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.

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  • Experience bandPrincipal/Manager (12-16 years)
  • Direct reports3-8 reports
  • Reports toDirector of Innovation
  • UK framework levelUsually a manager, or the deepest specialist in a team

Also advertised as Head of Innovation Portfolio · Principal Intrapreneur · Innovation Lead (Manager) · New Business Development Manager

Built on 43,079 real UK job descriptions we analysed · grounded in qualifications employers recognise

Two short quizzes about you

1From this job to a course

The qualifications matched to this job

Focus Awards Level 4 NVQ Diploma in Customer Service (RQF) Focus Awards Limited · Level 4 · covers 2 of 5 standards
OCNLR Level 4 Certificate in Business Administration OCN London · Level 4 · covers 1 of 5 standards
Pearson BTEC Level 3 National Extended Diploma in Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Pearson Education Ltd · Level 3 · covers 1 of 5 standards

Matched from the standards this job is measured against: a suggestion, not an official ruling.

The units you would start with

Encourage innovation Focus Awards Level 4 NVQ Diploma in Customer Service (RQF)
Contribute to Innovation in a Business Environment OCNLR Level 4 Certificate in Business Administration
Developing an Enterprise Strategy Pearson BTEC Level 3 National Extended Diploma in Enterprise and Entrepreneurship

The future skills this job leans on

AI Fluency working with AI as a thinking partner
Data Fluency turning numbers into a decision
AI Governance Fluency using AI responsibly
Automation Fluency building AI into how work runs
Change Fluency taking people through change
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Your Plan Illustration

Built for Manager, Innovation & New Ventures

3 units that map to this job, from the qualifications that cover it.

  1. Encourage innovation Focus Awards Limited · covers 2 of 5 standards Level 4
  2. Contribute to Innovation in a Business Environment OCN London · covers 1 of 5 standards Level 4
  3. Developing an Enterprise Strategy Pearson Education Ltd · covers 1 of 5 standards Level 3
These are the real units behind this job, in the order they rank for it. Nothing here is marked done, because this plan has not been started by anyone yet. Yours would fill in as you go.

2AI and this work

Will AI change your work as a Manager, Innovation & New Ventures?

Nobody can say exactly how. Here is what this job is being asked for next, and where to start.

The new skills this role is being asked for

  • AI-Powered Opportunity Identification
  • Ecosystem Orchestration & Partnership Building
Why each one is rising

The future skills this job leans on

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

What happens when you start

Next, a free account. We build your Manager, Innovation & New Ventures plan as you set up, starting with a Future Fluency module on using AI in your job. No card.

Your first Future Fluency module is free. After that, your AI tutor is £70 a month.

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3What this role really is

A manager of innovation and new ventures builds a repeatable process for finding, testing and scaling new revenue streams.

4What you'd actually use

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

Miro Expert

Architecting the enterprise-wide visual collaboration strategy; training entire departments on advanced facilitation techniques; leading complex multi-day ideation sessions for cross-functional teams.

Airtable Expert

Integrating Airtable with other enterprise systems (Jira, Salesforce) to manage the innovation funnel; using it as a lightweight CRM for new venture validation; overseeing team's use for idea pipeline and MVP management.

Figma Advanced

Overseeing the prototyping toolchain; making strategic decisions on design systems to accelerate time-to-market for new ventures; guiding team on building high-fidelity, interactive prototypes.

UserTesting.com Advanced

Developing the company's continuous discovery framework; presenting meta-analysis of user insights to executive leadership; guiding team on writing unmoderated test plans and synthesising findings.

Webflow Advanced

Managing a portfolio of live experiments built with no-code tools; making build-vs-buy decisions for no-code/low-code platforms; coaching team on building functional landing pages and simple web apps.

Tableau Advanced

Architecting and managing the Tableau Server environment for the innovation division; presenting portfolio performance to the board; guiding team on creating complex dashboards to tell compelling stories.

Anaplan Advanced

Owning the strategic financial planning for the entire innovation portfolio; defending investment theses to the CFO and investment committee; reviewing and challenging team's multi-year financial models.

5What 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 choiceComing in Where you are nowThe step above
Project Prioritisation & Resource Allocation Follows guidance from manager; executes assigned tasks. Proposes project priorities for their own work; allocates personal time. Prioritises workstreams within their projects; allocates time for mentees.
Internal Funding Requests Assists in preparing data for funding proposals. Drafts sections of funding proposals; identifies key assumptions to de-risk. Leads the creation of funding proposals for their venture; presents to internal committees.
Hiring & Team Development None. Provides informal feedback on new joiners. Mentors 0-2 junior team members; provides input on performance reviews.
Project 'Kill' Decisions Reports experiment results objectively. Recommends 'pivot or persevere' based on data. Makes 'pivot or persevere' decisions for their venture, with input from manager.

6How you'll be judged

The scoreboard, and what is not on it. The hard targets, how often each is actually looked at, and the quiet signals that never reach a dashboard.

Internal Seed Funding Secured
The total amount of internal capital (from our innovation fund or specific business units) you've successfully secured for your team's new ventures.
Target · >£1M annually for new projects (excluding follow-on funding for existing ventures)

In Q1, you successfully pitched and secured £300K for 'Project Phoenix' from the Retail BU and £200K from the central innovation fund, totalling £500K for the quarter.

New Venture Transition Rate
The percentage of validated new ventures (those that have completed their incubation phase and met 'kill criteria') that successfully transition into a business unit for scale-up.
Target · At least 1-2 new ventures per year transitioned, with a 75% success rate post-transition (defined as meeting first-year revenue targets).

Last year, your team incubated three ventures. 'Project Horizon' was killed, 'Project Atlas' was successfully handed to the Digital Products BU and hit its £2M revenue target, and 'Project Echo' is on track for transition next quarter.

Innovation Portfolio Balance Shift
The strategic allocation of your team's efforts and resources across core, adjacent, and transformational innovation horizons, aiming for a healthier long-term balance.
Target · Shift from current 90% core / 10% adjacent to 70% core / 20% adjacent / 10% transformational within 2 years.

Your latest portfolio review showed a shift from 85/15 (core/adjacent) to 78/17/5 (core/adjacent/transformational), moving towards the target balance.

Time-to-Validation (TTFV)
The average time it takes for a new idea to go from initial concept (hypothesis) to a validated learning (first MVP or key assumption de-risked).
Target · Reduce average TTFV from 12 weeks to 8 weeks across your portfolio.

Your last five experiments averaged 9 weeks from idea to first customer feedback, showing an improvement from the previous quarter's 11-week average.

Team Empowerment & Growth
How effectively you develop and empower your team members, ensuring they have the skills, autonomy, and support to lead their own ventures and grow their careers.
  • Team members successfully leading projects independently
  • positive feedback in 360-degree reviews regarding mentorship and coaching
  • at least one team member promoted or taking on significantly more responsibility annually
  • regular 1:1s focused on career development.
Cross-functional Influence & Collaboration
Your ability to build strong relationships and influence leaders in other departments, securing their buy-in and resources for your team's projects.
  • Being proactively consulted by other department heads on strategic initiatives
  • successful 'borrowing' of resources (e.g., engineers, sales time) from other BUs
  • positive feedback from peers in other departments
  • co-ownership of innovation initiatives with other teams.
Strategic Narrative & Storytelling
How well you articulate the vision and value of your innovation portfolio to senior leadership and the wider organisation, making a compelling case for investment and support.
  • Regular, well-received presentations to the executive team
  • clear, concise investment memos that get approved
  • internal communications that generate excitement and understanding for innovation
  • ability to connect individual projects back to the company's overarching strategy.
Learning & Adaptation Culture
Fostering a culture within your team and influencing the wider innovation function where failure is seen as a learning opportunity, and projects pivot or persevere based on data, not ego.
  • Post-mortem reviews for 'killed' projects that clearly articulate learnings and next steps
  • team members openly sharing experiment results (good or bad)
  • evidence of projects pivoting based on validated learning
  • clear 'kill criteria' being applied consistently.

7Would you like it

Both sides. What people enjoy, and what grinds them down.

What people enjoy
Building the Future

You get a real buzz from seeing a nascent idea begin to take shape, from a whiteboard sketch to a working prototype. You're driven by the potential impact of your team's work on the company's long-term success, even if it's years away.

Spending an afternoon with your team, refining a new value proposition based on fresh customer feedback, feeling that 'aha!' moment when it clicks.

Solving Complex Puzzles

You love the intellectual challenge of de-risking an uncertain business idea, figuring out the critical assumptions, and designing clever, cheap experiments to test them. It's a constant stream of novel problems.

Architecting a multi-stage experiment to validate market demand for a product that doesn't exist yet, using a mix of landing pages, surveys, and concierge MVPs.

Empowering & Developing Talent

You genuinely enjoy coaching your team, helping them grow their skills, overcome obstacles, and take ownership of their own ventures. Seeing them succeed is a huge win for you.

Guiding a junior intrapreneur through a difficult stakeholder conversation, then debriefing afterwards to share lessons learned and build their confidence.

What frustrates people
  • The Hand-off Problem: Successfully incubating a new venture only to have the receiving business unit fumble the scale-up or change its core, claiming 'it won't work in our market.'
  • Fighting for Scraps: Constantly battling for budget and engineering time against established business units that can show a clear, predictable ROI for their initiatives.
  • Metric Mismatch: Being judged on short-term revenue targets (e.g., quarterly P&L) when your entire purpose is to build long-term, uncertain growth options for the company.
  • The 'Idea Janitor': Your inbox is flooded with half-baked 'billion-dollar ideas' from everyone in the company, and you're politically obligated to review and gently reject almost all of them.
  • Being the 'Bad Guy': A huge part of the job is killing projects, including your own and those championed by passionate colleagues. This requires immense political and emotional capital.
What this role does not give you
  • Predictable, linear career progression (it's more like a jungle gym)
  • Guaranteed project success (most will fail or pivot dramatically)
  • Formal authority over large budgets or established teams
  • A quiet, heads-down analytical role (it's very people-focused)
  • Immediate, short-term financial returns (most impact is 2-5 years out)

8Who you work with

This role directly shapes our long-term growth pipeline. You're responsible for cultivating the next generation of products and services that will drive significant new revenue beyond our core offerings. Your team's success (or failure, and the learnings from it) directly influences how we allocate future R&D spend and where we place our strategic bets. You're essentially building the company's future while managing the present.

Inside the business
  • Product Leadership (Heads of Product, Senior Product Managers)
  • Sales & Marketing Directors
  • Finance Business Partners & CFO's Office
  • Legal & Compliance Teams
  • Head of Engineering / CTO's Office
  • Business Unit General Managers
Outside the business
  • External innovation partners or accelerators
  • Industry thought leaders and consultants
  • Potential acquisition targets (early-stage startups)
  • Key customers involved in co-creation or early testing

9What you need before you start

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

  • Proven experience (at least 5 years) leading complex innovation projects or new venture initiatives, ideally within a larger corporate setting.
  • Demonstrable experience managing and mentoring a small team of high-performing individuals.
  • A strong track record of securing internal or external funding for early-stage projects, including crafting compelling business cases and pitches.
  • Deep practical experience with Lean Startup, Design Thinking, and Business Model Canvas methodologies.
  • The ability to translate complex data and insights into clear, actionable recommendations for senior leadership.
  • A solid understanding of financial modelling for new businesses, including unit economics and P&L projections.

10What to practise next

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

Advanced No-Code/Low-Code Orchestration

The ability to quickly build and test complex business logic without deep coding is becoming a superpower. As a manager, you'll need to know how to stitch together multiple no-code tools (e.g., Webflow, Zapier, Bubble) to create sophisticated MVPs and automated workflows, accelerating your team's time-to-market.

API Integration (No-Code) · Database Design for No-Code · Security & Governance in No-Code · Scalability & Performance for No-Code

  • This month: Map out a complex workflow for one of your team's MVPs, identifying how multiple no-code tools could be integrated.
  • Next quarter: Take an advanced online course on a platform like Bubble or Webflow, focusing on multi-tool integration.
  • Month 4-6: Challenge your team to build a more complex MVP using a combination of 3+ no-code tools, providing guidance and troubleshooting support.
  • Month 7-9: Develop internal best practices or a 'playbook' for secure and scalable no-code development within the innovation team.

Quick win: Identify one repetitive manual task in your team's workflow and challenge a team member (or yourself!) to automate it using Zapier or Make.com. Small wins add up.

11Staying current once you are in

What people here do to keep up
  • Regularly attending industry conferences and workshops on innovation, entrepreneurship, and emerging technologies (e.g., SXSW, Web Summit, Corporate Innovation Summits).
  • Subscribing to and actively engaging with innovation thought leaders and publications (e.g., Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, TechCrunch).
  • Mentoring early-stage startups or participating in accelerator programmes as an advisor, to stay connected to the external startup ecosystem.
  • Taking online courses or executive education programmes in areas like advanced financial modelling, AI strategy, or platform business models.
  • Building a strong network of innovation leaders across different industries to share best practices and challenges.

12The rising capability

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-Powered Opportunity Identification

AI isn't just for automating tasks; it's becoming a powerful tool for spotting market gaps and customer needs that humans might miss. Competitors are already using AI to analyse vast datasets (social media, patent filings, academic papers) to find non-obvious innovation opportunities.

  • Generative AI for Trend Spotting
  • Predictive Analytics for Market Gaps
  • AI for Competitor Analysis
  • Ethical AI in Innovation

Ecosystem Orchestration & Partnership Building

No company can innovate alone anymore. The future of innovation is increasingly about building and managing complex ecosystems of partners—startups, universities, even competitors. Your ability to identify, engage, and manage these relationships will be critical for accessing new technologies and markets.

  • Open Innovation Models
  • Strategic Alliance Management
  • Venture Clienting
  • Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) Principles
  • Platform Business Models

13What you’ll use

What you’ll use

Skills this role draws on

Technical

  • Lean Startup Methodology
  • Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) Framework
  • Business Model Canvas / Lean Canvas
  • Design Thinking
  • Stage-Gate® (or Phase-Gate) Process
  • Venture Capital (VC) Financial Modeling

14The pathway

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. 1

    Senior Innovation Strategist / Lead Intrapreneur

    3-5 years in previous role

    Skills to master

    • Leading complex ventures end-to-end, securing initial seed funding, mentoring junior colleagues, navigating internal politics for individual projects.

    You're ready to move on when

    • Successfully led 3-5 ventures from concept to validated MVP.
    • Consistently met or exceeded 'kill criteria' or successfully pivoted projects based on data.
    • Demonstrated ability to influence senior stakeholders for resource allocation.
    • Received strong positive feedback on mentorship and coaching abilities.
  2. 2

    Startup Founder / Co-Founder (with an exit)

    5-10 years running a startup

    Skills to master

    • Full P&L responsibility, fundraising, team building from scratch, rapid product development, market entry strategy.

    You're ready to move on when

    • Successfully launched and scaled a product or service with demonstrable market traction.
    • Raised seed or Series A funding from external investors.
    • Managed a small team (5-15 people) through periods of high growth and uncertainty.
    • Experience with an acquisition or significant growth event.
  3. 3

    Product Manager (Senior/Lead level) in a Growth-focused role

    4-6 years in previous role

    Skills to master

    • Identifying new market opportunities, launching 0-to-1 products, managing cross-functional development teams, driving user acquisition and retention.

    You're ready to move on when

    • Launched at least one entirely new product or significant feature that opened a new market.
    • Demonstrated strong commercial acumen and understanding of business model innovation.
    • Proven ability to lead and influence engineering and design teams without direct authority.
    • Experience with A/B testing and experimentation at scale.

15Where this role leads

The long view: This role can lead to running a business unit as a general manager, or setting innovation strategy as a chief innovation officer.

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 Manager, Innovation & New Ventures is actually changing.

Where it leads

Roles this leads to

The record names a next step, but the catalogue has no page for it yet:

  • Director of Innovation / Head of Intrapreneurship (Level 006)

How you would learn this

One to one, on the work you already do

A tutor sets the task against your own job and marks the reasoning, at your pace. There is no cohort to fall behind.

A lesson from Encourage innovation, worked against Manager, Innovation & New Ventures.

Encourage innovation Level 4

Applied to your work in Manager, Innovation & New Ventures

This unit aims to enable learners to identify opportunities for innovation within an organisation, generate and test innovative ideas, and implement improvements effectively. Learners will be able to monitor the impact of implemented innovations.

How the thinking builds
  1. 1 Remember
  2. 2 Understand
  3. 3 Apply
  4. 4 Analyse
  5. 5 Evaluate
  6. 6 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.

It is £70 a month, billed monthly. Your free first module is Future Fluency, and you can cancel any time.

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See Your Progress Grow Illustration
Manager, Innovation & New Ventures
  • Lean Startup Methodology
  • Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) Framework
  • Business Model Canvas / Lean Canvas
  • Design Thinking
  • Stage-Gate® (or Phase-Gate) Process
  • Venture Capital (VC) Financial Modeling
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.

16The 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

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

  1. Director of Innovation / Head of Intrapreneurship (Level 006)

    3-5 years in current role

    One level up (L5 to L6)

    • Organisational Design for Innovation Structuring teams and processes to maximise innovation velocity and impact.
    • External Partnership Strategy Defining and executing strategic partnerships with external innovation ecosystems.
    • Commercialisation & Scale-up Managing the hand-off process and early-stage commercialisation of successful ventures.
    • Advanced Financial Governance Managing larger innovation budgets and defending investment cases at an executive level.
Working with AI on the job

Working with AI

Where AI is starting to help

Let's be real, managing an innovation portfolio involves a lot of moving parts: research, team guidance, stakeholder pitches, and endless data analysis. What if you could offload some of the heavy lifting and focus on the truly strategic stuff? Our internal AI tools and best practices can give you a serious edge.

We're not talking about replacing your brain; we're talking about augmenting it. Imagine having an AI assistant that handles the grunt work, leaving you free to coach your team, build crucial relationships, and make those big, impactful decisions. Here's how you'll use AI to make your role as Manager, Innovation & New Ventures, more effective and, frankly, more fun.

Automated Insight Synthesis

Use AI tools like Dovetail or Reduct to automatically transcribe, tag, and cluster key themes from dozens of customer interview videos. You'll get actionable insights in minutes, not days, letting you focus on strategy rather than manual review.

Accelerated Market Scanning

Set up AI agents to continuously scan patent databases, startup funding announcements (Crunchbase), and competitor product launches. These tools will flag emerging threats and opportunities directly to your dashboard, giving you a constant, curated intelligence feed without the manual grind.

Generative Idea Expansion

Use Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT-4 or Claude 3 as a brainstorming partner. Feed it your Jobs-to-be-Done research and ask it to generate 50 diverse 'How Might We' statements or draft 5 different value propositions. It's brilliant for overcoming creative blocks and rapidly exploring the solution space.

Rapid Business Case Drafting

Provide an LLM with your Lean Canvas and key experimental data. Ask it to generate a first draft of a 2-page investment memo or a 10-slide pitch deck for the internal funding committee. This handles the tedious 'blank page' problem, letting you focus on refining the narrative and the financial model.

Common questions

Common questions

How do you become a Manager, Innovation & New Ventures?

Common routes in include Senior Innovation Strategist / Lead Intrapreneur (3-5 years in previous role), Startup Founder / Co-Founder (with an exit) (5-10 years running a startup) and Product Manager (Senior/Lead level) in a Growth-focused role (4-6 years in previous role). Times vary with prior experience.

Where can a Manager, Innovation & New Ventures progress to?

This role can lead on to Director of Innovation / Head of Intrapreneurship (3-5 years in current role), depending on the skills you build.

What new skills matter most for a Manager, Innovation & New Ventures?

Increasingly, AI-Powered Opportunity Identification and Ecosystem Orchestration & Partnership Building. These are the skills our record of this role lists as growing.

Free tools

Want a read on where you stand?

Three free tools, no account needed. Each one ends with a role, a level and a way in.

Read the Zavmo manifesto to understand how you will be taught Meet your tutors

Or try another one

17Where to go from here

Other roles at Level 5

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

 More jobs in innovation

Stay in the field you know and move sideways rather than up.
If you leave this industry

The work involves spotting market gaps, testing new business models, and building teams that can act on them. These skills carry across industries, from finance to healthcare to manufacturing. The same challenge, building new things where the outcome is uncertain, comes up everywhere.

This role profile is © 2026 Growth Engineering Technologies Ltd. Built from UK occupational standards and regulated qualification data, and written for Zavmo.

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. Start my Manager, Innovation & New Ventures plan, free What happens next: a free account, then we build your plan as you set up. 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.