Honda Motor Europe Ltd
Innovation Project Lead
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At Honda we embrace inclusion in our various policies, so whilst our contracts state that the hours are as required to fulfil the role with a minimum of 37 hours per week, we offer flexibility for when you work.
Whilst there is no contractual right to work from home, the flexibility we offer is that you can request to work from home for a maximum of 40% of the working days in any one month, providing there is no business requirement to attend the office.
Role
The key challenge for this role is to bridge technical feasibility, customer insight, and market opportunity to drive robust, evidence-based digital innovation. The successful candidate will lead the verification and shaping of new digital business opportunities, taking early-stage ideas through structured exploration, customer and stakeholder validation, and business-case development.
As this is a newly formed role, the Innovation Project Lead will help establish practical processes, methods, and lightweight framework, that is grounded in real-world experience, to support effective early-stage exploration. This includes shaping research approaches, commissioning or managing external partners where appropriate, synthesising diverse evidence sources (qualitative, quantitative, technical, and commercial), and translating insight into clear, actionable direction. The role combines hands-on delivery of key activities, such as desk-based research, insight generation, opportunity framing, and business modelling, with the orchestration and integration of contributors across multiple disciplines. Team members will typically contribute alongside other responsibilities, so success depends on clarity of direction, prioritisation, and integration of insight, rather than direct line management.
The primary outcome of the role is to provide clear, evidence-based digital business concepts to senior stakeholders, including Global teams, on whether to invest, pivot, or stop opportunities, and to support the effective handover of validated concepts for onward maturation and scaling. Throughout, the role is expected to champion a people-centred, evidence-led approach to innovation that aligns with wider business strategy and Honda’s commitment to delivering genuine societal value.
The ideal candidate will be a natural collaborator, as strong stakeholder management is essential, with the ability to move comfortably between strategic thinking and practical delivery, and to build strong working relationships across disciplines and organisational boundaries.
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Main Responsibilities: Lead New Business Exploration & Coordination
- Lead a focused new-business exploration project from initial idea through to validated opportunity
- Define a clear roadmap for the exploration phase, including objectives, hypotheses, and decision points
- Coordinate activity across internal contributors (e.g. behavioural/customer insight, technical research, market sensing), recognising that team members support the project alongside other responsibilities
- Support project governance and approvals by preparing clear updates, materials, and recommendations for senior stakeholders
Rapid Concept Experimentation & Validation (Problem–Solution Fit)
- Develop early concepts that respond to clearly defined customer problems
- Shape and oversee MVPs, pilots, or pretotypes using lean and iterative approaches, contributing hands-on where appropriate
- Integrate customer feedback, behavioural insight, and data into ongoing solution refinement
Business Modelling & Investment Case Proposals
- Explore and test business-model hypotheses (e.g. value proposition, revenue logic, cost considerations) suitable for wider commercial stakeholders
- Conduct competitor and landscape analysis to understand differentiation and positioning
- Develop financial and commercial views sufficient to inform early investment decisions including business cases and recommendation materials
Handover & Transition Support
- Work with technical and product teams to clearly document findings, assumptions, and key learnings
- Support effective handover of validated opportunities to Regional and Global delivery teams where appropriate
- Ensure decision rationale, evidence, and open questions are transparent to enable onward development
- Contribute to improving internal approaches to early-stage new business exploration over time
Qualifications, skills and experience:
Required
- Hands-on experience working on new digital business creation, venture development, or early-stage concepts driven by customer needs
- Can move comfortably between strategic thinking, team orchestration and hands-on delivery
- Strong understanding of customer validation, problem–solution fit, and Hypothesis-Driven Experimentation (including PoCs / MVPs)
- Solid commercial capability, including experience developing business models and commercial strategies.
- Proven ability to lead and coordinate cross-functional teams (no direct line management) and external partnerships.
- Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills.
- Expertise in innovation frameworks (e.g., Lean Startup, Design Thinking).
- Comfortable working in environments with ambiguity, limited resources, and competing priorities
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Desirable
- University degree-level in Economics, Business or a related field
- Experience in managing budgets and governance processes.
- Knowledge of emerging technologies (AI, IoT, Cloud).
- Background in digital services or technology-driven businesses
Honda is committed to the principle of equal opportunity in the workplace for all employees, temporary workers, contractors, applicants and visitors. Honda also encourages respect for the individual differences and talents of others while making full use of one's own abilities, based on Honda's philosophy of respect for the individual.
At Honda, we value and celebrate diversity and are committed to being a fair, non-discriminatory company that promotes and welcomes the uniqueness and differences of people around the world. We recognise that a diverse workforce allows for different ideas and perspectives, and we encourage everyone to share them. We strive to foster a culture of belonging that is consistent with Honda's core values and lived out in the way we work and respect each other. For us at Honda, diversifying our workforce means increasing its overall strength by providing people with equal opportunities - regardless of personal characteristics or previous careers.
This commitment flows directly from the Honda philosophy and the belief that we are all working towards a common goal. Honda recruits, hires, trains and promotes the most qualified/experienced individuals at all levels without regard to race, origin, religion or belief, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability or any other protected characteristic.
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