Director, Innovation (Footwear)

12-15 Years

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Early Applicant

Job Description

GENERAL FUNCTION

The Director, Innovation — Asia is a senior individual contributor role responsible for orchestrating and enabling innovation across Wolverine Worldwide's Asia supply chain in close partnership with US-based Brand Product teams and Asia Brand leadership for Merrell, Saucony and Workgroup.
This role does not manage a dedicated innovation team, but instead operates through strategic factory and material partners, leveraging their existing technical, engineering, and development resources to establish Asia-based Innovation Centers of Excellence.

Core Accountabilities:

1. Innovation Platform Enablement

Act as the single-point innovation lead in Asia for Merrell, Saucony and Workgroup within Global Supply Chain
Establish and operationalize Innovation Centers of Excellence by leveraging partner factory capabilities
Drive innovation projects through influence, governance, and coordination, not direct reporting lines
Implement the Asia innovation framework (partner-led, phased, gated, and scalable)

2. Brand Collaboration — US & Asia

Work hands-on and day-to-day with US-based Brand Product, Innovation, and Development teams
Partner closely with Asia-based Brand Product leads to ensure regional alignment and execution
Translate brand innovation needs into manufacturable, scalable supply-chain solutions
Align innovation calendars, milestones, and decision points across time zones and regions
Ensure brand projects have defined launch timing, cost targets, and performance expectations

3. Strategic Factory & Supplier Partnership

Build and maintain deep working partnerships with strategic factories assigned
Rely on factory engineering, development, and lab teams to staff and operate innovation activities
Enable and guide factory investments in equipment, testing, labs, and sampling capability
Partner with key material suppliers to support innovation development and scale readiness
Ensure vertical MS / OS supply chain readiness to support speed, cost, and control

4. Innovation Governance & Project Discipline

Own the innovation intake, gating, and prioritization process
Balance out-of-inline speed projects with longer-horizon innovation initiatives
Ensure projects meet scalability, manufacturability, cost, and quality criteria before advancement
Drive timely decision-making with brands to prevent stalled or misaligned projects

5. Cost, Scale & Risk Management

Maintain early visibility to process costs, tooling, testing, sampling, and material investments
Ensure innovations align to brand cost architecture or are appropriately tiered and amortized
Manage process transfer and replication to additional factories as scale requires
Protect IP, data, and innovation learnings across partners

6. Validation, Testing & Performance:

Ensure Asia-based wear testing is embedded and aligned with brand expectations
Validate performance, defect rates, and process stability prior to inline adoption
Support T1 / T2 scale-up validation with factories before commercialization

Success Measures

Leadership, Experience & Profile

WORKING CONDITIONS

Normal office environment + 50% travel will be required.
The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed and are not intended to be an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties and skills which may be required.