Front End, Open Innovation & Category Defense Director (F/H)

The main missions will be to :

• Design, Lead and Deliver a Portfolio of “Agile” Technical/Scientific Proof of Concept projects. This agile portfolio is made of projects run in less than 2 years aiming at testing or unlocking  science and/or technological lockers and demonstrating their accessibility for the business. These projects are run and delivered outside the mainstream R&D project portfolio. They can apply to any field of science, technology and/or application, the Lesaffre group and businesses are interested in.

• Gather and study relevant lscience and/or technology leads coming from scientific literature and needs from Lesaffre teams (R&D, Makt, Commercial, Operations, else) that could enable to unlock a science and/or technology blockers and create value.

• Ignite, Contract and  leverage grants or lead collaborations. Enlarge with consistency  and according to our strategy Lesaffre footprints of value creation through external partners (academic, public consortium, start-ups, industries, else).

• Design and Build up the scientific strategy and road-map to defend some of our categories, according to Lesaffre Strategy and R&D director and  In in close relationship with relevant business, public affairs and/or communication. 

• Deliver the Portfolio of the POC projects, the Open Innovation collaborations and the Category(ies) defense roadmap, leveraging transversally the rest of the Lesaffre teams as operation and or the Centers of Excellence of the Lesaffre Institute of Science and Technology (LIST)

• Bring Sustainability in everything done

You will work in close collaborations with the Lesaffre Public Affairs, Business Units, Regions, and, with the other Center of Excellence (CoE) of the Lesaffre Science and Technology S&T (LIST)

You will manage a team of highskilled PhD and/or Ingeniors. 

You will be a member of the Lesaffre Institute of Lesaffre and Technology (LIST) Leadership Team reporting into Lesaffre Chief R&D Officer