Group Product Owner, Solution Innovation & Design

The Group Product Owner – Solution Innovation is responsible for defining the long-term vision, strategy, and execution priorities for a product group focused on rapid solution innovation for Community Pharmacy Solutions (CPS). Reporting to the VP, Solution Development and Innovation, this role owns the innovation backlog and sets priorities for a high-velocity Solution Innovation team that supports net-new solution incubation, targeted enhancements to existing solutions, and digital marketing enablement capabilities that support pharmacy growth and customer engagement.

This role also provides oversight and strategic alignment for the digital marketing enablement function led by the Director – Digital Marketing Enablement. This includes ensuring that digital marketing tools, pharmacy-facing digital platforms, vendor-enabled marketing capabilities, digital analytics, Google advertising and listing capabilities, MyGNP digital properties, CRM-enabled workflows, and related customer engagement platforms are aligned to CPS product development and innovation priorities. 

The GPO ensures innovation work is customer-centered, aligned to CPS strategy, and delivered through disciplined product management practices. The role partners with peer Group Product Owners and cross-functional stakeholders to translate market problems into validated opportunities, execute proof-of-concepts and pilots, coordinate digital solution experimentation, and move successful innovations into formal product roadmaps for commercialization and adoption. 

Primary Duties and Responsibilities 

Innovation Strategy, Pipeline, and Prioritization 

• Define and drive the innovation strategy, business plan, and growth themes for the Solution Innovation product group aligned to CPS objectives. 

• Maintain and prioritize an innovation backlog of ideas, prototypes, digital capabilities, and enhancements; make trade-off decisions based on customer value, feasibility, strategic impact, and readiness to scale. 

• Continuously evaluate and quantify market demand, define opportunities, and identify product/market fit for innovation concepts across CPS solutions and digital marketing enablement capabilities. 

• Ensure the digital marketing enablement roadmap and associated platform priorities are integrated into the broader Solution Innovation pipeline where they support CPS growth, customer engagement, and pharmacy enablement. 

Oversight of Digital Marketing Enablement 

• Provide strategic oversight to the Director – Digital Marketing Enablement and their team to ensure digital marketing tools, vendor capabilities, customer-facing digital properties, platform enhancements, and digital analytics support CPS strategy and innovation priorities. 

• Ensure digital marketing enablement work—including Google advertising, Google Business Profiles, My GNP Mobile app, MyGNP.com, social media enablement, Salesforce-enabled workflows, analytics, vendor management, and product marketing—is aligned to CPS product development and innovation processes. 

• Guide prioritization of digital marketing enhancement requests, platform capabilities, pilots, and customer experience improvements so they are evaluated through a consistent product and innovation lens. 

• Ensure digital marketing enablement capabilities provide actionable insights, scalable customer engagement tools, and reliable inputs into broader CPS solution development and commercialization planning. 

Solution Discovery, Prototyping, and Proof of Concept 

• Lead discovery to translate customer needs, digital engagement opportunities, and market problems into use cases, hypotheses, requirements, and minimum viable experiments. 

• Direct execution of proof-of-concepts, beta tests, digital pilots, and prototypes through the Solution Innovation developer pod and digital marketing enablement team where applicable. 

• Establish measurable success criteria for experiments and pilots; recommend whether to stop, iterate, scale, or transition work into the appropriate product or platform roadmap. 

• Ensure lessons learned from digital marketing pilots, customer utilization patterns, analytics, and vendor-enabled capabilities inform the broader product development and innovation process. 

Product Ownership and Agile Delivery 

• Lead end-to-end success of innovation capabilities from requirements definition through design, development, launch authorization, and post-launch analysis. 

• Partner with UX/design, digital marketing enablement, commercial, product, and operations teams to ensure voice of customer informs requirements and solution designs. 

• Ensure the Solution Innovation pod and digital enablement delivery teams operate with clear requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria, release plans, and measurable outcomes. 

• Identify and manage interdependencies, resource conflicts, platform constraints, vendor dependencies, and risks; develop mitigation plans and manage issue resolution. 

Team Leadership and Operating Model 

• Set priorities, sprint goals, and deliverable expectations for the Solution Innovation developer pod and ensure appropriate alignment with the Director – Digital Marketing Enablement and their team. 

• Create clear operating rhythms between innovation development, digital marketing enablement, product teams, commercialization, brand, and solution enablement stakeholders. 

• Establish sustainable processes and lightweight standards for rapid innovation, including documentation, privacy/security considerations, reusability, compliance review, vendor evaluation, and transition-to-scale artifacts. 

• Foster a culture of continuous testing and learning, encouraging smart risk-taking, customer-centered design, and iterative delivery. 

Cross-Functional Collaboration and Transition to Scale 

• Partner closely with other Group Product Owners to provide innovation capacity, prototyping support, and digital enablement insight for their domains. 

• Coordinate with Commercialization, Brand Management, Engagement, Solution Enablement, and Adoption leaders to ensure validated innovations transition with clear positioning, launch readiness inputs, training considerations, and adoption plans. 

• Develop and require transition artifacts such as problem statements, VOC insights, business case assumptions, pilot results, technical approach, vendor implications, digital analytics, and support model requirements. 

• Ensure digital marketing enablement initiatives that move beyond experimentation are transitioned into clear ownership, support, operating processes, and measurable performance management. 

Portfolio Health, Metrics, and Performance 

• Define and track innovation KPIs including throughput, concept-to-prototype cycle time, experiment success rate, adoption indicators, digital engagement metrics, and business value impact. 

• Monitor health of the innovation portfolio including adoption, customer value, technical and operational performance, quality, financial impacts, and digital enablement performance. 

• Provide regular updates to leadership on innovation and digital enablement progress and recommend adjustments to priorities, pace, resourcing, or governance. 

• Use digital marketing analytics, customer utilization, field feedback, and vendor performance reporting to identify opportunities for new products, enhancements, pilots, and customer engagement improvements. 

Compliance and Other 

• Ensure all innovation and digital enablement work complies with applicable policies, procedures, privacy, security, accessibility, and relevant legal/regulatory standards. 

• Performs related duties as assigned.