The CSGO sits on the CDP Board. The role has three main priorities:
- Strategy – stewarding implementation across CDP and managing its on-going evolution
- Growth and Innovation - selecting, incubating and growing emerging markets
- Marketing – ensuring CDP leverages marketing and market insight to strengthen its position
To help accomplish their goals CSGO will have two direct reports - Head of Emerging Markets, and Head of Marketing and Strategy Transformation.
Success Measures (What “Good” Looks Like)
- Clear, differentiated company strategy understood across the organization.
- Tangible revenue and growth impact from new market/business ventures.
- Improved market positioning and credibility with target customers and key stakeholders.
- Strong alignment between client needs, delivery capability, and commercial outcomes.
Job Duties and Responsibilities
Corporate Strategy & Transformation
- Define, own, and evolve CDP’s company-level strategy, ensuring alignment with long-term growth ambitions and market realities.
- Identify and evaluate threats and opportunities posed by emerging technology and industry trends and instigate necessary changes to our strategic direction and/or product/service offer.
- Challenge internal assumptions and provoke our market teams to innovate and evolve offerings.
- Translate foresight into actionable strategic opportunities.
- Ensure CDP remains ahead of shifts in client demand, technology adoption, and competitive dynamics.
- Lead change initiatives, translating strategic intent into operational and organizational transformation.
- Partner with the CEO and Board to define priorities, investment focus, and capability evolution.
- Ensuring strategy is commercially grounded, executable, and measurable.
Sector Expansion & Opportunity Identification
- Identify and evaluate new sectors and markets aligned with CDP’s capabilities and growth ambitions.
- Lead strategic assessment of sector entry, including market attractiveness, capability fit, and commercial potential.
- Support investment and capability-building decisions linked to sector expansion.
- Direct the strategy and trajectory of growth selected emerging market segments and steward their on-going development
- Build and manage senior-level strategic partnerships with external organizations (e.g. AWS, Microsoft, and other technology or ecosystem partners) – to extend our service offering, accelerate market access, credibility, and delivery capability and to open up new markets and clients.
- Own the strategic direction, governance, and commercialization of CDP’s knowhow, and capabilities.
Marketing & Corporate Positioning
- Own the marketing function, ensuring it supports strategic positioning, growth priorities, and builds market credibility.
- Lead the adoption of marketing tools and methods to advance CDP’s positioning
- Champion and facilitate their use to drive growth across our core and emerging market sectors.
- Ensure consistent, compelling articulation of CDP’s value proposition across all channels.
- Represent CDP externally at conferences, industry events, client forums, and executive-level meetings.
- Enable CDP teams to clearly articulate why CDP is uniquely positioned to solve client challenges, based on its knowledge, capabilities, and delivery excellence.
Skills and Attributes
- Deep commercial acumen; understands how ideas become revenue.
- Credible thought leader with the ability to influence senior clients and industry audiences.
- Able to operate across vision, strategy, and execution.
- Comfortable leading ambiguity and driving organizational change.
- Strong communicator who can translate complex capability into compelling client narratives.
- Pragmatic, outcome-focused, and delivery-oriented.
Experience and Education
- Senior executive experience in strategy, growth, commercial leadership, or innovation roles.
- Proven track record of monetizing strategy new capabilities, and/or IP.
- Experience of operating at board or executive committee level.
- Strong background in client-facing, market-led organizations (e.g. consulting, design, technology, innovation, engineering).
- Experience forming and managing strategic partnerships with global technology or ecosystem players.
Cambridge Design Partnership (CDP) is an end-to-end innovation partner, propelling global brands and ambitious start-ups to success. We build breakthrough products and services – from insight to ideas, prototypes to production – bringing innovation to life. Our teams are multi-disciplinary, uniting scientific rigor, design ingenuity, and engineering excellence for consumer and healthcare clients. People-centred, deeply collaborative, and – above all – expert, we’re uniquely positioned to shape the future for consumers, patients, and industry. Even our ownership model is innovative: We’re 100% owned by our employees, ensuring an open culture and a total commitment to our projects’ success. As part of our benefits package, we offer:
- flexible working
- a discretionary bonus
- excellent learning and development opportunities
- a 12% non-contributory pension
- private healthcare
- electric vehicle lease salary sacrifice scheme
- share incentive plan
- 33 days holiday inclusive of bank holidays
