Growth Services Lead

  • Full-time

Company Description

Future Lab Studio, Innovation Village’s Venture Building, Founder Support and Corporate Innovation Unit is seeking an exceptional Growth Services Lead to lead our Corporate Innovation & Advisory team. This role offers a great opportunity to support Uganda’s most visionary Executives leveraging technology to boldly steer Uganda into the future.

About the Innovation Village

The Innovation Village is Uganda’s launchpad for leading innovators and entrepreneurs. We are building an entire ecosystem of entrepreneurs and innovators in what is growing to become a business solutions provider for our biggest challenges or opportunities. From helping entrepreneurs launch and grow high-impact ventures to attracting regional and global opportunities, our ecosystem approach converges multiple partners including public, private, academia, research, and civil society as one force for good.

Through regional spaces in the capital Kampala, Jinja to the eastern, Gulu to the northern and Mbarara to the western parts of the Uganda, Innovation Village fuels the growth of game-changing founders, startups and enterprises that can positively transform our communities and economies.

About Future Lab Studio

Future Lab Studio (“the Studio”) partners with and supports exceptional Founders and Executives solving Africa’s most pressing challenges by using technology to overcome systemic constraints. Leveraging multisectoral innovation themes cutting across various technologies, the Studio empowers innovators through a range of innovation, incubation, and acceleration journeys to build, refine or scale scalable solutions, and to access market opportunities from across our partner network, connecting the best progressing teams to stage-relevant capital from across the Studio’s capital ecosystem.


The Opportunity

Our work with Founders continues to generate collaboration opportunities with local and international Corporates and with Entrepreneur Support Organizations that are seeking novel ways to partner with and leverage the talent in our community to achieve their strategic objectives.

We are looking for an exceptional Growth Services Lead to lead and grow our work with Corporates and Entrepreneur Support Organizations. You have a solid mastery of modern and emerging technology, management and innovation practices, and their application in powering strategy design and implementation. You are a bold and self-motivated independent professional that is highly collaborative, team-oriented and with exceptional attention to detail. You possess a deep sense of personal and professional integrity and work best in a fast-paced startup environment, driven by a deep sense of mission.

Job Description

You will work closely with the Future Lab Studio Lead to design and execute our strategy. Specifically, you will have P&L responsibility for the Corporate Innovation and Advisory function, leveraging our partner network to create and capture value across the Studio’s capabilities across our multisectoral Innovation Clusters. Specifically, you will:

  • Source and execute Corporate Innovation and Advisory engagements across our range of capabilities
  • Secure and manage the delivery of Innovation Programs across each of the sector-themed Innovation Clusters
  • Manage and collaborate with our Partner Network to create effective demand for and to offtake solutions built by our Portfolio Startups

Qualifications

  • 10+ years’ experience, with at least 3 years gained in Africa, in roles encompassing one or more of business development, corporate investing, service design, strategy consulting, management consulting, product management, innovation department management, or startup incubation/ acceleration
  • Have considerable Project or Program Management Experience
  • Have experience in creating, designing and/or implementing innovative products and services and keeping up to date with the newest technologies
  • Have experience in developing or transforming growth strategies or new business ventures
  • Worked in an environment where service design, design thinking, change management, UX design, design sprints and digital innovation are daily used
  • Possess strong general consulting skills and can overcome internal barriers through drive and determination
  • Have broad experience leading case teams to deliver outstanding consulting results for clients
  • Have experience with or knowledge of working in Agile environments and developing proof of concepts or minimal viable products
  • Experience developing and presenting sales pitches or creating business volume through add-on sales while delivering a project
  • Significant track record of generating revenue and originating and structuring long term collaborations that directly contribute to P&L
  • Solid network of multidisciplinary executive-level relationships across East Africa
  • Strong ability to cultivate and maintain high valued relationships and manage multiple counterparties and workstreams
  • Comfortable with ambiguity and able to problem solve effectively with the grit to pivot effectively and refocus on driving forward to successful outcomes
  • Culturally and functionally agile and a strong business and thought partner who works collaboratively and effectively cross-functionally with colleagues at all levels in an organization
  • Highly comfortable in fluid, rapidly changing environments with a proven ability to work independently and demonstrate problem-solving leadership with limited oversight
  • Experience coaching and supporting Senior Leadership towards sustained change
  • Exceptional ability to break down and solve problems through quantitative thinking, modeling, and analysis
  • Outstanding research skills and the ability to integrate multiple data sources to inform complex problems
  • Exceptional ability to communicate complex ideas effectively
  • Prior experience founding a startup is an added advantage

Additional Information

Why You Might Be Excited About Us

  • Opportunity to impact the direction and success of Future Lab Studio, and by extension, The Innovation Village.
  • An opportunity to build deep understanding of venture capital, early-stage investing, and what makes early-stage companies successful.
  • The platform to influence the creation and delivery of ground-breaking innovations with the ability to create better outcomes for millions of Ugandans and beyond.