About the Role:
The R&D Director will be the in-house expert and leader on research efforts to improve our existing flooring product as well as innovate and develop new healthy housing products that continue to improve the health and livelihoods of rural communities. He or she will work closely with the Global Director of Sales & Marketing to identify key customer pain points and develop and drive a clear research agenda to maintain EarthEnable’s leading edge in the rural flooring industry. The R&D Director will then integrate key learnings and product innovations into the company’s operating model to drive continued growth and success in the long-term.
Responsibilities Will Include but not be Limited To :
-Identify Key R&D Needs
-Meet with clients and analyze other sources of feedback and data to identify product failures
and product components or attributes that need improvement
-Work with the Global Director of Sales & Marketing to understand what drives perceived value
in clients, in order to prioritize various initiatives in the R&D pipeline
-Develop Research Agenda
-Recruit a scientific advisory board to advise and support research agenda development
-Develop research agenda by weighing priorities and considering criteria such as: potential for
impact, cost-benefit, and likelihood of success
-Allocate resources from the R&D budget towards this pipeline of research projects
-Create decision trees to present to management that indicate next steps based on broad
research outcomes of every project
-Execute Against R&D Agenda
-Hire team of engineers and/or scientists necessary to execute on the research agenda
-Lead and oversee team to ensure quality research methods and outputs
-Create research protocols, and ensure rigorous execution and analysis
-Track and push forward multiple research projects simultaneously
-Develop partnerships with external stakeholders (e.g., partnerships with universities and
corporate bio-resin and flooring labs for research we cannot do-in-house) to outsource aspects
of our R&D
-Closely manage external partnerships to ensure steady progress, lead innovations to get field
tested, and provide feedback on their success or failure
-Communicate Across Internal Company
-Communicate findings and tradeoffs effectively to CEO and management team to make
decisions about where to invest next (e.g. at specific forks in the road)
-Communicate research agenda to full company and get feedback when appropriate
-Communicate research findings to full company along with accompanying changes to the
operation
-Transition Learnings to Implementation or Additional Research
-Transition unsuccessful experiments to a new research arm or document reasons for failure
-Transition successful experiments to implementation, partnering closely with Quality Assurance
and Operations departments to ensure smooth implementation
-Publish findings that may be helpful or relevant to the scientific community
