BACKGROUND

Jagriti is building an innovation and incubation ecosystem in Purvanchal (Eastern Uttar Pradesh) to support local entrepreneurs and innovators through Jagriti Enterprise Centre – Purvanchal (JECP). The ecosystem is designed as a hub-and-spoke model across 15 districts of Purvanchal. The hub is a 1 Lakh+ sq ft world-class center in Deoria with facilities like co-working spaces, multipurpose hall, and centres of excellence. The spokes are district offices, manned by Udyam Corps and Mitra as connectors.

ROLE DESCRIPTION

The role of the Innovation CoE Director is primarily to set up and run the Digital Centre of Excellence, ensuring that it delivers its intended impact. This is broadly based on three areas of work on Thinking (Research), Doing (Implementation) and Being (Relationship / Ecosystem). The Director will have to personify all these three areas, with the team under him focusing on each of the three.

Research

The Director will ensure that the research – local and national/global – is carried out to bring relevant and contextual innovations to the Digital CoE. The Research Manager will be directly reporting to the Director. In this, he/she will have to look at both research from local sources of innovation as well as innovations that are national and global which can be adopted locally.

Implementation

The Director will ensure the implementation of the documented innovations through the Incubation process. The Operations Manager will be directly reporting to the Director. In this we anticipate a relationship with the downstream incubate companies which can implement the innovations seeded by the Digital CoE.

Partnership / Ecosystem

Understanding the local context and culture to assess and advance the innovation will be an important role of the Director. He/she will thus ensure that an innovation ecosystem is fostered, advancing regional development. This is a primary responsibility of the Digital CoE Director, where the person has to build relationships, mostly with corporates and other innovative bodies, focus on ecosystem creation involving local institutions and individuals, and manage the revenue and profitability of the CoE.

Digital and Cross-Domain Working:

In the context of the Digital Centre of Excellence, the innovations will focus on ‘digital’. Hence, the Director will require expertise, experience and passion in Digital. The Digital CoE is one of six such CoEs envisaged, a key remit of the Director will be the ability to look outside his CoE to link with other CoEs in the JECP. In some sense, the Digital CoE will act as a horizontal enabler for all other CoEs.

Reporting Relationship:

He or she will directly report to the Innovation Director, who will be the person responsible for the Innovation block and processes. In addition, the person will work closely with the Chief Operations Officer of Jagriti for overall financial and technical support.

Thinking (Cognitive Ability):

Curiosity in Context: Ability to understand the local circumstances of a small town or district and having the curiosity to look for new solutions and approaches
Research mindset: Ability to go deep into areas that requires investigation, both in the local environment and the district as well as nationally and globally
Sector ideation for Digital: Having the sector knowledge of Digital so that ideas can be understood, refined and progressed that will create local and national innovation

Leading (Execution Orientation):

Human centered approach: Ability to understand the problem from a human application point of view (design thinking) rather than only a technical or commercial perspective
Ease with ambiguity for innovation: Ability to live with ambiguity as the innovation is researched and progressed, hand holding it till it gets into the innovation track
Courage with humility: Courage to express point of view, holding and making a case for new ideas that will often require going against the grain, but doing it with full humility so that the person carries others with them

Being (Connection/Relationship):

Cultural sensitivity: Ability to soak in and adjust to the local culture, understanding and respecting it, so that the innovation is nested in the local culture and uses it to promote the innovation
Ecosystem, Partnership mindset: Thinking of not one innovation, not just in Digital but in the other remaining CoE as they are stood up, as well as in the context of a regional development, accelerator like the JECP
Commercial focus: A mindset of bringing revenues and over time creating a profitable sub- business under the overall innovation agenda, through revenue sources from local, national and international partnerships as well as creation of IP

Overall, the person should have a ‘transformative courage’ and ‘conviction attitude’.

Knowledge

The person should have a broad understanding of digital technologies and their wide applications. From his / her experience or expertise, the person should have advanced knowledge in some of the digital

technologies like enterprise, data or mobile. Other knowledge of AI, Big Data, Natural Language Processing, and connectivity solutions, would also be appreciated. Typically, Digital has been used to automate businesses in metro and Tier 1 districts. The innovations in the Middle usually are more related to making connections, with people, places and technologies.

Experience

The person should have at least 5-8 years of relevant experience working in a corporate or an incubator or accelerator or organization with a focus on digital.

People with Digital Innovation experience in reputed educational institutions like IITs, those who have experience in digital corporations and wanting to understand digital in real India, those who have experience in starting a digital venture related to smaller towns and districts, experience in incubators and accelerators with a digital experience are four typical categories of experiences suited for this role.