Breakthrough Innovation Manager - Sustainability

Breakthrough Innovation Manager – Sustainability

About the Role

Our 2030 sustainability ambitions require bold innovation beyond business-as-usual. As Senior Breakthrough Innovation Manager – Sustainability, you will play a critical role in developing and delivering breakthrough solutions that reduce our environmental footprint while unlocking consumer and commercial value.

Working within the Breakthrough Innovation (BI) team, you’ll support the identification, development, and deployment of disruptive, scalable sustainability-led innovations and play an active role in developing and delivering our strategy. To excel in the role, we are looking for someone who is proactive, curious, and able to see opportunities where others see problems. This is a delivery-focused, highly cross-functional role that brings purpose and innovation together to shape how Diageo meets the future.

Key Responsibilities

1. Deliver Breakthrough Pipeline

• Lead cross-functional teams to develop and deliver selected sustainability-led innovations, working in close partnership with Supply, Marketing, Brand Teams, and R&D.

• Stay close to the customer and consumer, constantly seeking insight and building this into new ideas as well as existing pilots. Find lean ways to get incisive insights that will unlock new potential, experimenting until we find the right proposition and business model.

• Support strategy and innovation roadmap development, ensuring alignment with 2030 ESG and carbon reduction goals.

• Track and report the impact of pilots, helping identify and resolve barriers to scale.

Note: The BI team is agile and may flex as needed to impact the business faster. This role may occasionally be allocated to wider BI pipeline projects.

2. Enable Cross-functional Execution

• Pitch and ‘sell’ new innovation in a compelling way, with messaging tailored to each audience.

• Collaborate with internal teams (e.g., Procurement, ESG, Innovation, Brand teams) to create engagement and ensure feasibility and commercial viability.

3. Support Innovation Scaling

• Coordinate across local markets to gather insights, test early concepts, and help translate global innovation into locally viable solutions.

• Support commercial readiness by co-developing toolkits and integration plans for selected innovations.

• Bring together lessons from pilot programs to refine business models and recommend improvements for future scaling.

Leadership Responsibilities

• Act as a key innovation delivery leader, role-modelling agility and consumer/customer-centricity across teams.

• Encourage agile, iterative development with a focus on experimentation, unblocking barriers to scale, and building the case for scaling breakthrough innovations.

• Promote strong collaboration across a matrixed environment.Contribute to a dynamic and diverse team culture in which every individual feels supported and able to do their best work.

• Collaborate closely with the other Breakthrough Innovation Manager to co-create ideas, challenge constructively, and bring your unique strengths to the table.

• Champion sustainability as a brand builder and growth driver within innovation teams.​​

Financial & Non-Financial Responsibilities

• Track and lead budget allocations for your projects. Identify funding needs and support business case development for further investment.

• Apply commercial thinking to assess the business case for innovations, including cost, margin, and ESG impact.

• Support the development of carbon reduction metrics and performance tracking.

Experience Required

• We are open to applicants from a wide range of backgrounds. Alongside your skills, we are looking for a brilliant mindset, with resourcefulness, curiosity, and an eagerness to deliver impact at scale.

• 6+ years of experience in innovation, sustainability, brand-building, insights, or commercial development within a global or cross-functional organisation.

• A blend of start-up and CPG experience would be particularly valuable.

• Demonstrated ability to lead and deliver innovation projects from idea to implementation.

• Passion for driving sustainability impact through real-world innovation, with good knowledge of topics such as carbon, circular economy, and low-carbon business models.

• Endless curiosity for human behaviour and the dynamics behind the adoption of new disruptive innovations

• Experience working with cross-functional teams, ideally in FMCG; experience from digital businesses is also valuable.

• Excellent stakeholder engagement and communication skills.

• Ability to handle complexity, solve problems, and deliver outcomes in ambiguous environments.