Report to: Director of Catapult Network Office

Direct Reports: n/a

Location: This role is home based with the option to work from one of the Catapult centre locations. The host Catapult, and employer, will be High Value Manufacturing Catapult which has offices based in Birmingham and London. There will be a requirement for the incumbent to travel nationally to the Catapult centre locations.

Salary: c£55k per annum

Primary Purpose: As Strategic Collaboration Manager of the Catapult Network Office, this role will support the Catapult Network Office’s mission to enhance strategic collaboration and learning across the Innovate UK Catapult Network. This role will develop a culture of strategic collaboration and innovation, ensuring that Catapults can effectively leverage each other’s strengths to facilitate greater impact in driving innovation. You will lead in building frameworks for efficient knowledge sharing and strategic alignment on impactful initiatives that provide significant value to the Innovate UK Catapult Network.

Main Responsibilities:

Strategic Collaboration

• Develop and implement strategic frameworks to create a cohesive network environment that fosters a culture of continuous learning and knowledge sharing across the Innovate UK Catapult Network.
• Provide strategic guidance and leadership in shared learning and impactful coordinated outcomes, identifying priority areas and generate a live list of opportunities for cross-Catapult collaboration and programmes.
• Develop and build mechanisms to drive and support identified opportunities.
• Keep abreast of developments that impact the innovation landscape to align cross-Catapult initiatives and programmes with national and global priorities.

Strategic cross-Catapult Coordination

• Manage the coordination and delivery of the cross-Catapult strategic collaboration groups, including secretariat support, agenda development and alignment with Innovate UK priorities.
• Develop and monitor the performance of strategic collaboration frameworks, providing regular reports that analyse the effectiveness and support the refinement of strategies for optimal impact to ensure current methods are delivering high-value cross-Catapult outcomes.
• Lead the organisation and management of an annual cross-Catapult conference on a key strategic theme, facilitating Innovate UK Catapult Network learning dissemination and collaboration opportunities.

Relationship Management

• Build and manage relationships with colleagues across the Innovate UK Catapult Network – including the Catapults, Innovate UK, Innovate UK Business Connect and Innovate UK Business Growth – to identify collaboration opportunities and support alignment of priorities.
• Lead the inquiry management for the Catapult Network Office by managing information requests directed to Catapults between the Catapult Network Office and Innovate UK in a structured manner to ensure the process is efficient and effective.

Information and Knowledge Management

• Support the Catapult Network Office in building and maintaining a central information and knowledge repository, including case studies and metrics, to support inquiry management and the development of data-driven reports.
• Working with Innovate UK’s innovation infrastructure team and the impact collaboration group to develop compelling and consistent network-level data sets and case studies.
• Work with the Communications Manager to develop content showcasing collaborative success stories from cross-Catapult collaboration groups and programmes.

Job Scope

Impact: You will lead the development of strategic collaboration, learning and innovation across the Innovate UK Catapult Network, supporting Catapults to effectively leverage each other’s strengths to facilitate greater impact on driving innovation and UK economic growth.

• Directly participate in the establishment of long-term functional or regional strategies in support of the Catapult Network long-term business strategy.
• Work with senior management team to support or implement Catapult Network business strategy.
• Performance of processes and products.
• Indirectly – has an influence on the Catapult Network functional/regional or new product strategies by providing input into the strategy where input is generally provided within the limits of the role.

Communication:  

Building effective relationships with a wide range of colleagues across the Catapult Network and Innovate UK, providing motivation to drive a collaborative culture. You will report status updates and key decisions taken across the strategic collaboration groups to key stakeholders (executive teams, CEOs and Innovate UK).

• Achievement of communication objectives which may be contentious.
• Position communicates with employees of the Catapult groups.

Innovation:

Developing continuous improvement opportunities and utilising different learning techniques and toolkits to foster knowledge sharing and relationship building across the Innovate UK Catapult Network. You will be able to collate, aggregate and disseminate qualitative data to enable cross-Catapult collaboration and initiatives for the benefit of the UK economy.

• Not responsible for developing or guiding new products, services, processes or systems.
• Responsible for considering resource implications when collaborating.
• End to end solutions are considered fully and completely.

Knowledge: See Person Specification for information re: skills and experience.

This role does not have direct reports however the ability to influence without direct line management “control” is essential given the reach required.

This role will have a national focus and knowledge of regional variance is necessary.

Total points: 270

Position Class: 50

Person Specification:

Qualifications	Essential
Level 6 Qualification in a relevant discipline or equivalent experience	X
Experience
Proven experience in the innovation, research and development sector(s)	X
Proven experience of working in complex environments, with a broad range of stakeholders, professional experts and industries.	X
Strong prioritization, time management and organisational skills to manage qualitative data and identify key innovation themes,	X
Proven ability to build relationships internally and externally with the purpose of driving participation/collaboration across multiple organisations and influencing an engaged stakeholder community at the highest levels in a complex environment.	X
Proven ability to organise and manage large-scale events and roundtable meetings.	X
Proven administrative skills (to provide secretariat support, develop agendas, align activities with strategic priorities)	X
Strong report development abilities coupled with the ability to analyse effectiveness	X
Proven ability to build effective working relationships that foster collaboration for the greater good.	X