Engagement details:
- Job Title: Head of Venture Building & Innovation
- Client: Prominent business conglomerate
- Employment type: Permanent
- Location: Onsite in Dammam, Saudi Arabia
- Education: Bachelor's degree in Engineering with an MBA is preferred
- Experience level: 15+ years
Role Overview:
Our client, a leading business conglomerate is seeking an accomplished professional to lead its Venture Building & Innovation function. The role entails identifying, assessing, incubating, and scaling new ventures, technologies, and business models focused on Energy Transition, Industrial O&M Digitization (across Oil & Gas and Power), and Decarbonization.
The role combines strategic innovation leadership, venture development, and techno-commercial rigor, translating emerging technologies into commercially viable businesses, joint ventures, products, or platforms.
The position leads cross-functional venture teams, provides direction to domain-focused sales leaders, and acts as a key interface with the CEO and Board on venture strategy and capital allocation.
Key Responsibilities:
1. Venture Ideation & Opportunity Identification
Identify new venture opportunities, startups, IP-led technologies, and scalable business models in:
- Energy Transition (renewables, hydrogen, storage, electrification, etc.)
- Industrial O&M Digitization (AI, IoT, predictive maintenance, asset management)
- Decarbonisation (CCUS, emissions monitoring, efficiency, circular solutions)
- Build and maintain an active venture opportunity funnel through market scans, ecosystem engagement, accelerators, and partnerships.
2. Venture Evaluation & Investment Readiness
Lead technical, commercial, and financial due diligence for venture opportunities. Develop techno-commercial business cases including:
- Profit & Loss statements
- IRR, ROI, payback analysis
- Scaling assumptions and risk scenarios
- Evaluate ventures for build, buy, partner, invest, or co-create decisions.
3. Venture Building & Incubation
- Lead the incubation and venture-building process, from concept to pilot to scale.
- Define venture theses, MVPs, go-to-market strategies, and validation milestones.
- Establish governance, operating models, and funding stages for internal and external ventures.
- Work with technical, commercial, and operations teams to convert ideas into standalone ventures or integrated business lines.
4. Cost Benchmarking & Value Creation
- Develop baseline cost models of existing industry practices.
- Quantify cost savings, efficiency improvements, and emissions reductions enabled by ventures.
- Position ventures on clear value propositions versus traditional methods.
5. Commercialization & Sales Enablement
- Provide strategic leadership to sales heads across the three innovation domains.
- Support customer pilots, proof-of-concepts, and early commercial deployments.
- Shape pricing models, value-based selling approaches, and scale-up strategies.
- Engage directly with strategic customers and partners for venture rollout.
6. Governance, Capital Allocation & Reporting
- Drive structured venture governance, stage-gate reviews, and capital deployment discipline.
- Report venture progress, portfolio performance, risks, and strategic insights to the CEO, Board, and Investment Committee.
- Ensure alignment of the venture portfolio with the corporate strategy and long-term growth objectives.
Key Requirements:
- 15+ years of experience in innovation, venture building, strategy, or new business creation across the energy, oil & gas, power, or industrial sectors.
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering (Energy, Mechanical, Electrical, Chemical, or related field)
- Master's degree in Business Administration (MBA), Innovation Management, or Strategic Management preferred
- Demonstrated experience in launching, scaling, or investing in new ventures, startups, or technology-driven business lines.
- Strong background in techno-commercial evaluation, investment analysis, and financial modeling.
- Proven leadership experience managing multi-disciplinary, entrepreneurial teams.
- Experience engaging with boards, investors, or investment committees is highly desirable.
