Lead Venture Builder

The role

The firm is on an ambitious journey to designing and building bespoke products, solutions and services that will enhance our portfolio beyond legal counsel, to help clients achieve their strategic goals. The role of Lead Venture Builder will be key to supporting the firm’s innovation agenda, by leading on a development of new ventures under the Law& brand.

This role has a significant impact on delivering on the firm’s innovation strategy and positioning of our firm’s brand as one of the most innovative Law Firms and foster a culture of continuous innovation within DLA Piper. 

It’s a brand new role in our organisation, which presents a unique opportunity of joining the Law& Innovate Incubator at its inception, and provide resources to help our people get their initiatives and projects off the ground. It’s an opportunity to be at the forefront of a major shift in a legal industry – a shift towards innovation and entrepreneurship.

MAIN DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead Law& Innovate Incubator team, ensure appropriate skillset, high level of engagement and delivery excellence within the team
• Communicate an inspiring vision, create mileposts and clarify complexity when necessary to build engagement around the incubator and its core purpose
• Support the firm in navigating the change, and empower our people to unlock creativity through the introduction of practical and user-friendly tools and methods for identifying opportunities for new ventures
• Collaborate across practice groups, teams and geographical regions to offer a framework for evaluation and further definition of innovative ideas through to viable business concepts
• Engage with potential clients to test assumptions and develop concepts, potentially co-creating with clients
• Offer hands-on support and guidance to the business on using the framework for introducing concepts to the incubator through a structured intake process
• Present concepts to the  Innovation Investment Committee in order to seek approval through the various incubation stages
• Manage the support and funding for selected projects, as appropriate
• Ensure the appropriate governance of the Proof-of-Demand for selected projects, engage with key stakeholders and manage relationships and expectations
• Monitor outcomes in terms of benefits against the predicted value add, ensure required structure is in place to iterate when necessary, and an appropriate margin of flexibility against the initially planned outcomes
• Support informed business decisions in regards to the selected projects, communicate clear and compelling vision to rally support, influence and negotiate across the organisation as required
• Oversee the launch of new ventures in the market by applying methodical and practical approach, with the external and internal context and impact in mind
• Leverage international platform to broaden perspective and ensure solutions and services are appropriate in scale and complexity to target audiences and clients within the relevant international remits
• Act with a high level of integrity, communicate both desirable and less desirable outcomes in a transparent way to support informed business decisions and inspire trust
• Ensure diversity of points of view, prioritise an inclusive and equitable culture, so we can build more diverse teams that deliver better results for our clients

ABOUT YOU

• Significant experience in entrepreneur- and/or intrapreneurship, venture building within technology and/or legal services professional environment
• Significant experience in delivering large scale projects within a complex matrix structure, with examples of influencing stakeholders across organisation and supporting business decisions of a significant commercial impact to organisation
• Leadership experience, managing team through sense of purpose and shared vision, with ability to relate well to wide spectrum of people, successful track record using methods and techniques for coaching individuals or groups by a balanced combination of support and direction
• Experience in client-facing role, with pitching ideas of a significance business and commercial impact to variety of clients, able to relate well to target audiences and articulate clear vision and plan, and shift comfortably between high level overview and a deep dive conversation (i.e. technical plans, budget implications, financial forecasts, etc.)
• Understanding of the commercial considerations in opportunities for new revenue streams for the business, ensuring alignment with the strategic objectives of the organisation
• Influence, persuasion and personal impact, can provide examples of influencing and persuading others to take specific course of action when not in position of authority
• High degree of comfort with ambiguity, able to make quality decisions in a timely manner, sometimes with incomplete information under strict deadlines and pressure
• Organisational agility, understanding cultures of organisations, origin and reasoning behind key policies and practices, ability to drive results and influence through formal channels and informal network
• Successful track record in managing innovation, with a good sense about managing creative process of others and ability to anticipate how potential ideas may play out in the market, with examples of facilitating effective brainstorming involving stakeholders at a different levels of seniority in organisation
• Strategic agility, broad knowledge and perspective, ability to anticipate future consequences and trends accurately, ability to create competitive and breakthrough strategies and plans

Law& is DLA Piper’s brand for disruptive legal, tech and business advisory solutions – including DLA Design, our own design thinking methodology.
We challenge assumptions, embrace change and discover ways to make business faster, easier and better.
For our clients and for ourselves In Law&, you’ll turn ideas into action, using our incubators to build solutions for success.
Your vision and voice will inspire imagination throughout our firm.
You won’t just be at the heart of creating DLA Piper’s future as a world-class innovator in legal and professional services
You’ll redefine the future of the legal world. 

ABOUT US
DLA Piper is a global law firm with lawyers and business service professionals located in more than 40 countries throughout the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific. Our global reach ensures that we can help businesses with their legal needs anywhere in the world. We strive to be the leading global business law firm by delivering quality, service excellence and value to our clients and offering practical and innovative legal solutions to help them succeed. Our clients range from multinational, Global 1000, and Fortune 500 enterprises to emerging companies developing industry-leading technologies, as well as government and public sector bodies.

OUR VALUES
In everything we do connected with our People, our Clients and our Communities, we live by these values:

• Be Supportive – we are compassionate and inclusive, valuing diversity and acting thoughtfully
• Be Collaborative – we are proactive, passionate team players investing in our relationships
• Be Bold – we are fearless and inquisitive, challenging ourselves to think big and find creative new solutions
• Be Exceptional – we are strategic and driven, exceeding standards and expectations

DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION
At DLA Piper, diversity and inclusion underpins how we live our values and everything we do. We believe that everyone has a voice, and that everyone’s voice counts. We know that the rich diversity across our firm makes us stronger, more innovative and creative, which helps us to better serve our clients and communities. We are committed to providing an inclusive working environment and culture across our global firm, where everyone can bring their authentic self to work.

Diversity of perspective, thought, background and culture combine to make us the leading global law firm; that’s why we actively seek to build balanced teams. We welcome the unique contribution that you will bring to our firm and actively encourage applications from all talented people – however your talent is packaged, whatever your background or circumstance and regardless of how you identify.

HYBRID WORKING
We recognise that people have responsibilities and interests outside of their career and that as a business, we all benefit from working flexibly. That’s why we are open to discussing with candidates the different ways in which we are able to support requests for agile working arrangements.

PRE-ENGAGEMENT SCREENING
In the event that we make an offer to you, and where local legislation permits and where relevant, we will conduct pre-engagement screening checks that may include but are not limited to your professional and academic qualifications, your eligibility to work in the relevant jurisdiction, any criminal records, your financial stability and work-related references.