Innovation Manager (Youth Innovation Portfolio), P4, TA, Office of Innovation, Stockholm, Sweden (#00117978) Duration: 364 days with possibility of extension

Contract

This is a P-4 contract. This kind of contract is known as Professional and Director staff. It is normally internationally recruited only. It's a staff contract. It usually requires 7 years of experience, depending on education.

Salary

The salary for this job should be between 90,970 USD and 117,287 USD.

Please keep in mind that the salary displayed here is an estimation by UN Talent based on the location and the type of contract. It may vary depending on the organization. The recruiter should be able to inform you about the exact salary range. In case the job description contains another salary information, please refer to this one.

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For every child, hope

The Office of Innovation (OoI) works to catalyze UNICEF's and all its partners’ expertise and resources against key children-outcomes bottlenecks, with a view to continuously ideate and scale the most effective solutions with transformational potential at scale to achieve the child-related SDGs.

The office is doing this by continuously exploring new ways of accelerating results for children, investing across a range of early stage solutions, and harnessing internal and external expertise towards continuously iterating and fine-tuning the most promising solutions for children through a systematic portfolio management approach, and leveraging all stakeholders’ innovation energy, know-how and resources from intergovernmental, multilateral, private sector and non-governmental fora (think tank, academia).

How can you make a difference?

The incumbent will work under the general direction of the P5 Senior Advisor, Innovation (Portfolio, Culture and Scale). The incumbent will follow guidance and work closely in partnership with the P4 Innovation Manager (Governance, innovation portfolios), who leads on the global strategy, guidance and governance around UNICEF’s innovation pipeline.

Key functions, accountabilities and related duties/tasks:

1. Work in close partnership with relevant thematic team in Programme Group and any other identified OOI focal points to:

• Commission or maintain a current understanding of the external landscape within which the portfolio and its innovation projects are situated, ensuring UNICEF is positioned to add unique value to the global ecosystem, best utilizing its strengths, resources and networks and avoiding duplication.
• Actively manage and evolve the problem statements that focus solving and scaling within the portfolio.
• Manage the Stage Gate process for intake, review and exit of projects from the portfolio.
• Collaborate, consult and have smooth flow of information sharing on an ongoing basis to support alignment of innovation and results for children in the relevant portfolio.

2. In line with the parameters agreed by the Innovation Portfolio Steering Committee (IPSC) and under the guidance produced by P4 Innovation Manager (Governance, innovation portfolios), actively manage the Youth innovation portfolio, focusing time and resource on the innovation projects with greatest transformative potential. Key activities to achieve this include:

• Develop and implement appropriate sourcing tactics for the portfolio, taking into account factors such as the degree of effective solving for each problem statement.
• Manage the Stage Gates for the portfolio in line with agreed global governance processes.
• Provide, broker and source support for projects within the portfolio, enabling them to accelerate new approaches to solving.

3. Support the Partnerships team in resource mobilization for the portfolio in general and for specific projects in the portfolio.

4. Support the Communications team to enable them to identify content, plan for and communicate and showcase regularly the portfolio and its projects across a range of opportunities to raise profile, positioning and engagement and support for these and the Office of Innovation, through opportunities such as stories, media, social media, events, briefings etc.

5. Support the P4 Performance & Evidence Manager to scope and support evidence generation and learning opportunities for the portfolio.

6. Under the guidance of the P4 Performance & Evidence Manager and in timely responses to requests from the OOI P2 Planning Officer, undertake performance management, monitoring and reporting functions for the relevant innovation portfolio.

7. In collaboration with the P3 Innovation Specialist (Knowledge Management and Capacity Building), support innovators in Youth across UNICEF by:

• Ensuring INVENT and SharePoint content is up to date in relation to the portfolio
• Capture and distill learning and share these widely through mechanisms such as recorded webinars, documentation, videos and other assets, developmental reflections etc.
• Connect and engage the external and internal parts of the ecosystem through bringing external experiences into UNICEF as well as showcasing internal best practice.
• Facilitating south-south and triangular sharing of best practices

8. Under the direction of the P5 Senior Advisor, Innovation (Portfolio, Culture and Scale), support the development of a strategic and conceptual design of an innovation hub for Youth that addresses problems that UNICEF needs to solve to accelerate outcomes for children in this area.

[1] https://www.unicef.org/executiveboard/media/5221/file/2021-12-Add1-Draft_results_framework-Strategic_Plan_2022-2025-EN-ODS.pdf

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

Education: An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in one of the following fields is required: Social Science or Humanities, Innovation-related field, International Relations, Business Administration, or another relevant technical field.

A first degree plus an additional 2 years experience, may be accepted in lieu of a Master’s degree.

Experience:

• A minimum of eight (8) years of relevant professional experience is required at national and international levels in the areas of innovation and/or social and economic development and cooperation.
• Demonstrated experience in innovation practice, spanning start-up to scaling innovations in relevant sector(s).

• Experience of designing and managing innovation portfolios is desirable.

  Language Requirements: Fluency in English is required. Knowledge and fluency of another UN language is an asset.

For every Child, you demonstrate...

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, and Accountability (CRITA) and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results.

The UNICEF competencies required for this post are...

• Innovates and embraces change (Level 3)
• Maintains and builds partnerships (Level 2)
• Thinks and acts strategically (Level 2)
• Drive to achieve results for impact (Level 2)

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

Click here to learn more about UNICEF’s values and competencies.

UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Remarks:

This position is not considered an elevated risk role. However, UNICEF reserves the right to conduct further vetting/ assessment within the scope of child safeguarding as appropriate.

UNICEF only considers higher educational qualifications obtained from an institution accredited/recognized in the World Higher Education Database (WHED), a list updated by the International Association of Universities (IAU) / United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The list can be accessed at http://www.whed.net/

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

The VA is open to all (internal and external) candidates.