Director of Product Innovation

About the Company

For over 150 years, Southwestern Advantage has existed to help young people develop the skills and character they need to achieve their goals in life. The company offers a sales & leadership program that gives university students a way to afford their degrees, gain entrepreneurial skills, and experience personal growth. Each summer, a sales force of over 1,500 independent student reps market educational resources to families across the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. The Southwestern Advantage Internship is the official internship of the Southwestern Family of Companies.

About the role

The Director of Product Innovation is accountable for the future of the Southwestern Advantage product portfolio. This position identifies opportunities and strategies to serve families through innovative and relevant product offerings through thoughtful client and market research. The Director of Product Innovation connects the field insight to portfolio solutions and leads the design, sourcing, and launch of new products and services including digital, AI-enabled and service-based solutions beyond historical print catalog offerings. This position owns the decision of what we build and what we retire. The Director of Product Innovation reports to the President of Southwestern Advantage and works in close partnership with the Director of Product Quality and Enhancement, Sales, Marketing, IT and Finance and provides excellent customer service to team members and customers while demonstrating the company values and supporting the mission.

Responsibilities

• Own a continuous research program with families: in-home observation, post-purchase interviews, structured surveys, and critically research with prospects who declined to buy
• Maintain a documented set of assumptions about what families want, and design cheap tests to disprove them before significant capital is committed
• Personally spend time in the field during selling season. Ride-alongs and in-home observation are a requirement of this position, not a perk
• Build and own an independent channel for dealer and sales-organization feedback
• Provide thorough, proven analytics for informed decisions and vision setting including close rates by product, refund reasons, product-level objection tracking, and post-season dealer confidence surveys
• Lead concept through launch for new offerings, including digital,