Big thank you to my friends at SHIFT for sponsoring this week's RSS feed. SHIFT is an award-winning charity that designs products and builds social ventures to help solve social problems. I recently met with Tori Flower, Brand and Comms Director at SHIFT to talk about my experiences of funding and what works and what doesn't work when trying to build socially focused businesses and products. The output of that work is this report --> Driving continuous improvement: Insights from funding social tech. It prompted SHIFT to create Progressively - a model to help social products, services and programmes make progress towards deep and lasting impact.

SHIFT are on the hunt for a Senior Innovation Lead to join them and play a central role in the development of new products and services for both SHIFT and their amazing partners.

Senior service designer Louise presenting concepts for Storybox

Here is the information from the job spec:

As an Innovation Lead at award-winning design charity SHIFT, you’ll spend your days:
Creating solutions (for SHIFT and it’s partners) that drive social impact, meet user needs and are financially sustainable
Taking responsibility for the gradual development of compelling products and services working end-to-end through human-centred research, design strategy, testing, implementation and business planning
Taking prototypes, products, services and solutions to market while continuing to iterate Building buzz and a network of users, customers, partners, experts and influencers around your product, service and vision
Exploring and taking opportunities to build the dedicated product team and strategic partnerships throughout this process
Writing funding, investor or client proposals to attract additional funding or win new business
Supporting the team to share and develop best practice

SHIFT researchers and designers enjoying a sketching workshop

“I joined SHIFT 18 months ago, tired of corporate consulting, jumping across short term projects, and seeking a sense of purpose and longer term ownership in the work I do everyday. That’s exactly what I got at SHIFT.

As an Innovation Lead, you get to own end-to-end on impact-focussed products and services - redefining the problem, developing creative concepts and creating rigorous measurement frameworks to see the impact of your work.

We’re a mixed bag of designers, researchers and entrepreneurs. And all massive nerds when it comes to work. But we know how to have the craic as well. SHIFT is a great place to push yourself as far as you want to go. ”

— Louise Cooper, Senior Service Designer

You’ll be perfect for this role if you:

Are a generalist able to take hold and ownership of the end to end innovation process on a diverse range of projects and products
Collaborate well with a multidisciplinary team or researchers, designers, commercial strategists and partners
Are a strong facilitator (in and out of workshops) and a strong project manager able to deliver large-scale projects that bring together a diverse group of people, viewpoints, insights and skills
Are both creative and process driven, able to take people on the creative journey with you while also stretching yourself and others to try new things
Have a love for human centred design for social good and get obsessed with using it to tackle some of the world’s trickiest challenges
Have proven experience of taking a product or service to market or of launching a venture. Are not afraid to get your hands dirty and get in to the real world (fast) to learn more about the ideas, products and services you’re developing
Work well with senior stakeholders, and have the proven ability to foster buy-in for the service design process and outputs
Would (however humbly) say ‘that’s me!’ to the words impactful, practical, experimental, empathetic and entrepreneurial

Reward structure:

•   Full-time
   •   Based in Farringdon, London
   •   £46 – £50k per annum
   •   25 days annual leave plus 1 additional day for each year at Shift (up to 5)
   •   Matched pension contribution up to 4%

Prototyping one of our products with users

Essential experience will include:

5+ years in a role in Service Design, Innovation, User Centered Design, UX or similar Experience supporting a end-to-end product or service development process
Working on both improving existing products / services and building new ones
Excellent communication, interpersonal skills and client management
Desirable experience will include:
A proven record of working in teams who have piloted or scaled new social or consumer products or services in market
Experience working on digital products and face to face services Experience working on products and services that deliver social impact
Experience working in a startup or social business environment

Application process:

Please submit a CV and a cover letter of no more than two sides of A4, explaining why you are interested in the role and why you are best placed for the job by 11.59pm on Sunday 3rd June to hello@shiftdesign.org.uk. Interviews will take place in the second week of June.

“SHIFT is a small, fast growing and ambitious design charity. It’s going through exciting times and it’s a great time to come on board”

— Tayo Medupin, Innovation Director

Learn more about the weekly redjotter syndicated feed sponsorship.

♥ SHIFT is recruiting a Senior Innovation Lead