Innovation Associate, Growth Partnerships

Permanent employee, Full-time · London

The Role's Purpose

This role will support the Plexal proposition, Growth Partnership. This role will support start-ups, scale-ups and SMEs with a 1-to-1 growth support programme where they will be embedded in a small number of high potential companies.

Plexal is driving a new category of intervention in support of the UK Government’s number one mission of economic growth. You can read more about the Growth Partnership here: https://www.plexal.com/plexal-sme-support-system-growth-partnership/

As an Innovation Associate, you could also work collaboratively with the Innovation Services team to deliver other cross-competency projects. This may include working on programme delivery, research activity, or innovation consulting. You’ll get the opportunity to engage with a diverse array of stakeholders, including startups, scaleups, corporations, government, non-profit organisations, investors and academia.

What You'll Do

Engaging with SMEs to understand their needs, challenges, and interventions that will support their growth
Identify, create and implement effective growth plan and strategy for the SME
Managing and delivering bespoke support to SMEs, in line with their growth needs. This could be to help secure investment, drive sales acquisitions, improve brand and awareness, drive marketing strategy, improve product management or work on team organisation and culture, as examples.
Undertaking quantitative analysis, market research and data collection to stay informed about key technology trends, emerging startups and innovation/growth themes and develop acute market awareness
Supporting the design and delivery of innovation programmes and related content at Plexal to engage SME’s, clients, and the wider ecosystem
Continuously monitoring the start-up and innovation landscape, seeking out opportunities to engage with promising innovators and entrepreneurs
Proactively managing regular interaction, communication and collaboration with external stakeholders
Support administrative aspects of innovation project management, such as maintaining project documentation and handling financial queries.
May require business travel across Plexal sites.
Ability to manage and influence through both face-to-face and virtual team environments.
You may be asked to undergo Security Clearance (min. requirement: British Citizen or min. of 5-year residency in country, no significant gaps out of UK). Pre-existing SC welcomed.

Your Skills

Essential

Highly organised with an understanding of barriers to startup growth and innovation practices
Effective customer and stakeholder engagement
Understanding of business strategy
Effective planning and prioritisation skills with the ability to keep track of multiple tasks and deliverables
Analytical, with the ability to think critically and to understand, interpret and articulate complex concepts and requirements
Competent at producing high-quality deliverables and presentations for external audiences
Excellent Project Management, Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint skills
Financial acumen
Higher Education degree, or relevant professional certifications, or equivalent knowledge gained via work experience.

Your Experience

Essential

2 years' experience working in an innovative environment such as a startup. incubator, accelerator, VC, or consultancy.
Experience with working with multiple stakeholders, such as startups and corporate clients, but also understanding the practicalities of working in a growing company
Experience in facilitating and delivering external workshops or events to a high standard, both virtually and in-person.

Desirable

Experience and understanding of innovation processes such as lean startup
Experience in innovation programme delivery
Experience in startup mentorship

Who You Are

Comfortable dealing with ambiguity and operating in constantly changing environment
Energised by the challenges and opportunities presented working for a high-growth company.
Excellent communicator with strong interpersonal skills and the ability to interact with diverse stakeholder groups
Team player and motivated self-starter who can take initiative with workload and tasks
Passionate interest in digital and emerging technologies with a drive to continually learn

Why us?

Plexal’s Values:
Mission: We inherit the mission of UK government and deliver it in an agile and creative fashion.
Collaboration: We believe in the power of working together.
Equality: We strengthen ourselves as a team by embracing the different.
Care: People are at the heart of what we do; we care about our customers, members and colleagues.

As a start-up, we thrive in a dynamic and fast-paced work environment dedicated to empowering innovators. We embrace individuals who leverage technology and creativity to tackle our greatest challenges head-on. We strongly advocate for maintaining a harmonious work-life balance, our goal is to ensure every member of our team can authentically be themselves and live their best lives. We firmly believe that innovation and creativity flourish when we cultivate a diverse workforce, comprising highly skilled individuals with a wide range of perspectives to contribute.

In return we will offer you:

Salary: £30,000 - 40,000 depending on skills and experience
Annual bonus scheme
A generous pension scheme (with a company contribution of up to 10%)
Private healthcare, life assurance and critical illness cover
25 days holiday plus bank holidays
Volunteering day

Plexal is an equal opportunities employer and we actively encourage applicants from individuals from all backgrounds. We are a Disability Committed employer and are willing to make reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process.

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About us

Plexal is the innovation and growth company helping to strengthen the UK’s technology capabilities through collaboration.

With teams in London, Manchester and Cheltenham, we work closely with government, industry, startups and academia to drive economic growth and reinforce national security.

Founded by Delancey in 2017, Plexal delivers four core services: creating workspaces for innovators, running innovation programmes and consultancy, building regional tech clusters and helping SMEs scale strategically.

By closing the gap between early-stage and established organisations – across the public and private sectors at home and abroad – we’ve impacted over 1,200 businesses, added £731m to the UK economy and helped create 9,400 jobs.

Headquartered at Here East on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Plexal partners with organisations including the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the National Cyber Security Centre, Airbus, Amazon, Barclays Eagle Labs, Google Cloud, TfL, The Alan Turing Institute and the University of Oxford.

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We are looking forward to hearing from you!

Thank you for your interest in Plexal. Please fill out the following short form. Should you have difficulties with the upload of your data, please send an email to recruitment@plexal.com. If you require this job advert in another format (e.g. large print), are unable to submit via the application below, or have any other accessibility requirements please email recruitment@plexal.com.