Director, Innovation - Packaging & Equipment (ASEAN & South Pacific Operating Unit)

Director, Innovation, Packaging & Equipment (ASEAN & South Pacific Operating Unit)

Reports to: Senior Director, Innovation - ASEAN & South Pacific Operating Unit

Location: Singapore

Job Summary:

ASP OU Marketing is undergoing a step-change to deliver more balanced, sustainable growth, powered by deeper consumer intimacy, stronger integration, accelerated innovation, and data- and tech-enabled precision marketing. The organization is designed to combine local relevance with scale, shift data and technology from experimentation to competitive advantage, and operate with clear accountability for impact and ROI. All roles operate within a tightly integrated OU-Market model, where the OU elevates and enables strategic growth + OU-wide platforms while markets integrate, execute, and track performance with speed and rigor while developing local content, partnership and experiences.

Focus, Scope, & Impact:

Based in Singapore, this individual contributor role will accelerate and champion the end-to-end packaging innovation agenda across ASP, pioneering new packaging solutions and platforms that enable sustainable, profitable growth and differentiation.

• Own and lead packaging innovation pipeline development:

• Co-create and refine multi-year packaging innovation strategies and long-range plans with Packaging, Country Marketing and Commercial teams, Global teams, Technical, Supply Chain, Procurement, Sustainability, R&D, and other key stakeholders.

• Drive opportunity identification through consumer, market, regulatory, sustainability, technical, and cost insights-translating these into robust innovation platforms and a healthy pipeline of concepts and projects.

• Orchestrate effective project execution:

• Ensure rigorous E2E project management, from concept validation to launch and scale across multiple markets.

• Accelerate validated packaging solutions to ensure full market readiness, manufacturability, operational feasibility, supply chain alignment, and regulatory compliance.

• Ensure innovations meet clear consumer jobs to be done while aligning with system capabilities, sustainability requirements, and cost structures.

• Serve as the packaging innovation champion and connector, enabling knowledge flow and collaboration across packaging, technical, procurement, commercial, and country teams.

• Embed business, commercial, and capability impact:

• Deliver innovation that aligns with brand guardrails, sustainability goals, and system investment priorities, ensuring commercial, financial viability, compliance, and market fit.

• Support robust business case development, facilitate cross-functional reviews, manage innovation risks and trade-offs, and drive resource allocation.

• Ensure packaging innovations deliver clear business impact: growth, differentiation, margin enhancement, value creation, consumer recruitment, supply chain efficiency, and reduction of environmental footprint.

• Drive culture of performance, agility, and learning:

• Drive accountability for packaging innovation performance-speed to market, quality and impact of launches, conversion of pipeline into measurable outcomes, and business results.

• Foster a mindset of test-and-learn within teams, encouraging rapid iteration, scalable success, sustainability breakthroughs, and best practice sharing.

• Embed robust post-launch reviews and continuous improvement, leveraging system feedback and external trends to optimize future pipeline quality, innovation velocity, and market relevancy.

• Significant experience 8-12+ years in FMCG innovation, portfolio/project management, and cross-functional leadership, ideally with regional exposure.

• Deep expertise in category strategy, new product development (NPD), and commercialization processes.

• Experience in managing packaging innovation and launches from opportunity identification, concept development, and viability assessment

• Proven skills in partnership with R&D, Technical, Marketing, Packaging, Finance, and Commercial teams.

• Strong command of pipeline management tools, workflow discipline, and post-launch analytics.

• Growth and transformation mindset, agile, with ability to manage complexity and ambiguity.

• Strong business and technical acumen; skilled in building business cases, delivering ROI, budget management, and navigating regulatory environments.

• Acts as a key connector between Category, Country Marketing, Technical, R&D and supply chain teams, facilitating two-way knowledge transfer.

• Socializes innovation opportunities, project progress, and pipeline updates with leadership, functional partners, and launch teams.

• Champions best practice exchange; integrates feedback from markets to refine future pipelines.

• Builds alignment through innovation gate process, and post-launch reviews.