Every day we deliver safe and secure energy to homes, communities, and businesses. We are there when people need us the most. We connect people to the energy they need for the lives they live. The pace of change in society and our industry is accelerating and our expertise and track record puts us in an unparalleled position to shape the sustainable future of our industry.
To be successful we must anticipate the needs of our customers, reducing the cost of energy delivery today and pioneering the flexible energy systems of tomorrow. This requires us to deliver on our promises and always look for new opportunities to grow, both ourselves and our business.
Job Purpose
Venture Fellowship Program
About the Position:
The Venture Fellowship program is an exclusive apprenticeship program for high potential National Grid employees to acquire venture investing and innovation expertise.
The Fellowship is a four year full time in residence program in which a cohort of candidates will spend one year in each functional group within National Grid Partners (NGP): Innovation, Incubation, Corporate Venture Capital, and Business Development. Reporting to the VP of each department throughout the rotation, the candidate will execute on the team specific needs to meet our strategic and financial goals.
- Innovation – Converting new ideas into commercial solutions to find a better way to do things in the future. The innovation team sources internal and external ideas, drives consistency and best practice, promotes collaboration between our businesses, provide access to support across the Group, and delivers value from our innovation activity.
- Incubation – Investing in the earliest stage companies, the incubation team will be the eyes and ears for National Grid Partners, to monitor the market and to identify the disruptors of the future.
- Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) – Investing in expansion and growth stage startups that are ready to partner with our core and competitive businesses to provide strategic and financial returns.
- Business Development (BD) – Supports internal and external innovation, drives collaboration, and cultivates partnerships with our portfolio companies to unlock value and accelerate growth.
The Venture Fellowship is a vital program that is part of the NGP global team that works across the organization to support the regulated and non-regulated businesses and the Chief Information and Digitization Officer’s (CIDO) office. The Venture Fellowship program develops investing and innovation competency, and provides senior level mentorship and sponsorship during the journey.
After the yearlong rotation in each functional group of National Grid Partners, Venture Fellows have the unique ability to deploy their skills across the organization or spin into one of the NGP divisions. Fellows are valuable teachers and help us embed the skills needed to establish an entrepreneurial mindset and promote a culture of innovation throughout the company.
Key Accountabilities
Position Responsibilities (including but not limited to):
- Support the needs of each functional group throughout the rotation to meet strategic and financial objectives
- Source new ideas, deals, and projects to feed the innovation and investing pipeline
- Disseminating learnings across the team and throughout National Grid
- Coordinate events, workshops, projects, and programs for operational efficiency
- Analyse and evaluate ideas, companies, and projects based on functional parameters to make informed data driven decisions
- Updating, implementing and maintaining function specific procedures
- Managing competing resources and priorities to achieve team goals
- Monitoring deliverables and ensuring timely completion of projects
- Building and maintaining strong relationships with a diverse set of internal and external stakeholders
- Strong interpersonal, presentation and communication skills.
- Assist in driving commercial success for portfolio companies and innovation projects.
Supervisory/Interpersonal- Experience Required
Leadership Characteristics Required:
- Expert communication (written and spoken) and relationship-building skills are critical
- Strategic and entrepreneurial thinker with the ability to handle complexity and ambiguity, and correctly prioritize activities while focusing on achieving both short-term and long-term objectives
- Demonstrated ability to constructively influence decisions and collaboratively evolve the status quo, requiring situational adaptability to act as a leader, a facilitator and a participant
- Drive for continuous development of both self and team members
- Desire to inspire others and teach the skills learned to better the team
- Honesty and integrity to do the right thing
Qualifications
- Undergraduate degree in Business, Science or Engineering preferred.
- Understanding of the energy, consumer, and IT sectors including future trends, competitors, incumbents, and business models.
- Technology literate, with experience of understanding the business and strategic implications of technology change.
- Basic understanding of the venture capital / private equity / incubation investment sectors as it relates to emerging technologies and business models.
- Knowledge of internal and external crowd sourced innovation idea formation and development.
- Marketing and business development – Identifying new, relevant companies that we can partner with by investing and helping them to scale their businesses and to achieve a profitable exit.
- Basic understanding of the strategic partner landscape and execution of successful strategic partnerships.
- Understanding of financial concepts and ability to model business scenarios.
- A history of leading and supporting successful projects.
If interested, please apply here.
