Technology Scout Europe - Open Innovation H/F

Job description

The Open Innovation Department of L’Oréal Research and Innovation (R&I) is responsible to Watch & Scout breakthrough discoveries, technologies, ingredients and products aligned with L’Oréal global strategy and to transform them to bring a step change in performance to the beauty industry. To that end, it builds and manages long-term partnerships with external partners.

In order to accelerate L’Oréal R&I engagement, we are seeking for a candidate for a Technology Scouting position based in Paris area to explore European ecosystems. You are responsible for identifying disruptive and emerging opportunities in Europe relevant to L’Oréal challenges and business, and providing precise analysis, benchmarking, and technical positioning of these opportunities. Doing so, you select the relevant partners for L’Oréal and implement the collaboration with the Business Development team to transform the innovation into valuable products or services for L’Oréal. 

What your role will be

·  Identify, analyze, classify and segment emerging targets (opportunities) from the European Tech ecosystems in alignment with L’Oréal strategic needs and fit.
·  Drive internal technical assessment of Opportunities through the decision process.
·  Prioritizes and synthesizes technical information about opportunities.
·  When required, prepare and initiate contact with partners to strengthen the technical dossier.
·  Clearly articulate value proposition including conceptual positioning, technology benchmarking, and IP landscape.
·  Work with Business Development team to consolidate overall assessment and value proposition of selected opportunity.
·  Manage further technical engagement with selected partners.
·  Contribute to Open Innovation Strategy in Europe.
·  Work together with global Scout, Watch and Business Development teams to continuously improve Open Innovation ways of working.

Your key success factors 

MSc/PhD in chemical, computational, physical, or life sciences.

Minimum 3 years of relevant experience managing technical and scientific identification and evaluation of innovation projects, ideally in a Beauty and/or Consumer products setting. You are able to recognize and assess cutting edge technologies in a variety of fields, and to envision impactful product concepts and business opportunities. 

You are curious and able to interact with external partners on a broad scope of scientific areas. You are autonomous to do a first analysis of the opportunities before interacting with internal experts.

In addition to strong scientific and analytical abilities, you have a strong entrepreneurial spirit in order to manage complexity and suggest solutions rather than pointing out problems. 

You are a team player with strong interpersonal skills to establish fruitful and efficient partnerships, by taking into account all the stakeholders’ needs and interests. You have strong communication, analytical, and negotiation skills. You have experience working with international teams. 

A solid understanding of the startups ecosystems and their ways of operating will be a plus. Experience in working in a startup or in a “startup mode” will be a significant added advantage.

You are fluent in English.