New Product Development Lead

BookTrust is the UK’s largest children’s reading charity. We know that children who read are happier, healthier, more empathetic, and more creative. They also do better at school.

Working with every local authority and across every region in the country, and supported by Arts Council funding, we reach over 1.3 million families a year via partners in schools, children’s centres, health visitors and libraries. This incredible network helps us to get children reading across the country.

It’s an exciting time at BookTrust, we’re investing in developing our traded offers to enable us to provide more intensive support and reach more families to get children reading. We need a New Product Development Lead, to drive new product development in response to key new markets for BookTrust – fostering, adoption agencies, local authorities and primary schools. Working with our Proposition Development Manager, Product Developers and new commercial team, the postholder will design and develop new products and services that meet customer needs, our organisational goals and most importantly our puts our families’ needs at the heart of design. The postholder will take a ‘test and learn’ approach, making rapid progress against our most risky assumptions, whilst also sketching out and engaging the organisation in a 3 year product development strategy.

Objectives and Deliverables for the role:

• Lead the development and prioritisation of our key product hypotheses and build out 3-year development plan scenarios for Story Explorers (our brand new subscription offer) and prioritised primary school offers (tbc) including (not exhaustive) our optimal subscription model, online support model for parents/carers and practitioners, parent/carer push notifications, B2B customer journey.
• Work with our research and impact team to establish robust design learning approach and methodology that supports us to make rapid progress against hypothesis testing and ensure our Story Explorers offer has maximum impact with families.
• Work closely with our supply chain, IT, digital and books teams to scope feasibility and define key product parameters and design requirements early in the development process.
• Create excellent documentation including concept boards and low fidelity prototypes, process maps, development roadmap, empathy maps, ecosystem maps and value proposition canvas’ to support ongoing development to support the development of our new offers.
• Establish project group, structures and ways of working to support ongoing offer development and establish the right level of governance for development work.
• Coach and support more junior designers/line reports to nurture BookTrust’s in-house service design capability.

Would suit someone who:

• Has strong practical experience of using design thinking or human centered design approaches to develop new products and services.
• Has a product or service development background in a mid-large organisation/company.
• Has some commercial/social enterprise experience.
• Is used to combining on and off-line touchpoints to create impactful products and services.
• Is very comfortable with ambiguity and guiding stakeholders through it.
• Understands that brilliant collaboration is at the heart of design.

To apply please complete the application along with a copy of your CV and covering letter showing how you meet the person specification and your motivations for applying for the role. Your covering letter should not be longer than two sides.

PLEASE NOTE: Applying as soon as possible is advised, as the vacancy may close early, due to the high volume of applicants.

Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusivity

We aim to provide an inclusive recruitment process and actively welcome applications from diverse talent pools: minority ethnic candidates, candidates with disabilities and long-term conditions and candidates from underrepresented communities.

We are committed to equality of opportunity and want to ensure we have an accessible application process for all candidates. If you need any reasonable adjustments or would like us to do anything differently during the application process, please contact our HR team (contact details can be found on our website) to discuss your requirements further.

BookTrust is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children. The recruitment and selection process reflect our commitment to safeguarding therefore, the suitability of all prospective employees will be assessed during the recruitment process in line with this commitment, and pre-employment checks.