Global Innovation Finance Director

The Global Innovation Finance Director is the finance business partner to Chief Innovation Officer, accountable for an annual innovation pipeline of >$500m and the leader of the Global Innovation Finance team.

The role partners with the innovation function to ensure that the innovation pipeline is robust, sustainable, and aligned with Diageo's needs both globally and regionally while balancing consumer need spaces, commercial bandwidth, project economics and supply capability. The role must build relationships across group to understand strategic imperatives, including with regional FDs to understand specific P&L needs, and supply to ensure capacity/capability exists to deliver pipeline ambition. It also leads the development of a team of sixteen finance professionals across the globe who partner with their respective regional innovation teams.

This role reports to the Group Head of Performance Management, partners directly with the Chief Innovation Officer and sits on the Global Innovation Leadership Team.

Complexity of role

• Ability to support prioritization and consolidate collective needs of regions into ideal innovation pipeline (magnitude and quality) and then work across functions to secure resources to enable pipeline delivery.
• Provide thought leadership and influence shape of innovation pipeline delivery.
• High degree of exposure to senior executive leadership across functions and geographies
• Champion the new (2024) Innovation go-to-market process to ensure it runs as an efficient, highly effective, and compliant process.
• Plan and manage the annual Innovation / R&D budgets to ensure necessary allocation of resources and compliant spend/accounting.
• Balance focus between short-term and long-term, short-term financial governance of in-flight projects and longer-term planning and influencing broader Innovation Agenda
• Managing a large, diverse team leading disparate geographies across several time zones

Key outputs / Deliverables

Innovation Strategy:

• Future planning, partner with Innovation Leadership team to build/maintain and influence the 5-year rolling plan for innovation (spanning current financial year, next financial year, rolling 24-36-month pipeline)
• Thought leadership to create and align the priority metrics to drive innovation performance eg incrementality, growth contribution.
• Connecting role to ensure Innovation plans are meeting partner needs across the regional Executive Team (incl. markets GMs and FDs), Supply, Global Innovation, Marketing/Brand Finance
• Prepare 5-year strategic plan inputs and Innovation contributions to annual strategy conferences and other executive-level interactions.
• Provide thought partnership and performance management interventions on opportunities and gaps in near-in performance to Global Innovation goals.

In year Innovation execution, planning and forecasting:

• Oversee financial governance of all innovation projects in their decision support efforts.
• Consolidate latest expectations of Innovation pipeline to ensure adequate shape/magnitude.
• Lead annual operating plan for Innovation.
• Partner with Finance and commercial leads to ensure Innovation launches are well coordinated and are set up for success.

Budget owner

• Plan and secure right annual Innovation funding for project R&D
• Coordinate regular spend outlooks and course correct as necessary.
• Propose project budget re-allocations where under or overspends are identified in partnership with Innovation Leadership Team

Performance Management and Reporting

• Review monthly performance insights to SILT.
• Prepare innovation commentary to IR to craft narrative on innovation's impact on group performance.
• Lead annual reporting to provide investors insight into Diageo's innovation sustainability efforts.

Team Leadership

• Lead team of sixteen finance professionals across the globe
• Build relationships with team to understand development needs and assign stretch projects and sponsor their future career steps in partnership with local Finance teams.
• Ensure team is sharing standard methodologies across regions and actively collaborating tin service of broader innovation finance agenda.
• Build strong culture of ownership and provide regional teams space to tailor global needs to regional realities.