Innovation Specialist (Knowledge Management and Capacity Building), P3, FTA, Office of Innovations, Stockholm, Sweden (#00117601)

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For every child, hope

The Office of Innovation (OoI) works to catalyze UNICEF’s and all its partners’ expertise and resources against key children-outcomes
bottlenecks, with a view to continuously ideate and scale the most effective solutions with transformational potential at scale to achieve the child-related SDGs.
The office is doing this by continuously exploring new ways of accelerating results for children, investing across a range of early stage
solutions, and harnessing internal and external expertise towards continuously iterating and fine-tuning the most promising solutions for
children through a systematic portfolio management approach, and leveraging all stakeholders’ innovation energy, know-how and resources from intergovernmental, multilateral, private sector and non-governmental fora (think tank, academia).

How can you make a difference?

Under the general guidance and direction of the P5 Senior Advisor Innovation (Portfolio, Culture and Scale), and in close collaboration with relevant Senior Advisers across OOI, the post is responsible for:

1. Contribute in developing, leading and implementing OOI’s learning strategy for innovation to build culture and capacity at all levels of the organization to innovate and to effectively diffuse new innovations. Represent OOI in coordination with DHR, DAPM/Knowledge
Management and Programme Group where relevant to the subject matter.

2. Leading capacity and learning field engagement, need finding and mapping to identify and prioritize areas for learning and capacity
building intervention by undertaking sense making of the expressed and unexpressed needs.

3. Coordinate the design, development and use of new capacity building experiences and resources following design thinking, user-centered approach.

4. Provide technical contribution in the knowledge management strategy and its implementation and undertaking its execution, updating and maintenance across internal channels including Agora, ICON, Yammer, dedicated SharePoint sites, INVENT, UNICORN, and making use of and engaging with external channels; including as part of DOC Internal Communication Strategy of which the two pillars are Innovation and Culture.

5. Coordinating with the OOI Communication Team on their activities to raise awareness, promote and gather support for this knowledge management and capacity-building opportunities and resources.

6. Engaging actively and network in the global ecosystem of innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship, and related areas to horizon scan, source learning and capacity development resources, and exercise thought leadership to position and diffuse UNICEF’s innovation learning work.

7. Managing and supporting innovation-related mechanisms that enable UNICEF offices to access technical assistance, including through an Expertise Brokerage model i) as non-financial engagement within a partnership through the OOI Partnerships team under the P5 Partnerships and Resource Mobilization; ii) via deep expertise relationships through the Innovation Nodes modality under the P5 Senior Adviser (HQ & Nodes), and iii) through directly managing modalities such as OOI’s HCD LTAs.

8. Collaborating with OOI communication team on shared activities aimed at nurturing and strengthening a culture of innovation across UNICEF through internal and external communications channels.

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

• An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in Social Science or Humanities, Innovation-related field, International Relations, Business Administration, or another relevant technical field.
  *A first University Degree in a relevant field combined with 2 additional years of professional experience may be accepted in lieu of an Advanced University Degree.
• A minimum of 5 years of relevant professional experience in the areas of innovation and/or social and economic development and cooperation.
• Demonstrated expertise in innovation practice, spanning start-up to scaling innovations, especially in the social and/or development sectors.
• Demonstrated mastery in design thinking / human-centered design especially as applied to development programming is required.
• Demonstrated experience in designing and implementing learning experiences from cradle to grave.
• Experience of internal communications and / or culture change is an asset
• Experience in public advocacy, media engagements, and ability to produce intellectual leadership assets on innovation is an asset.
• Developing country work experience and/or familiarity with emergency is considered an asset.
• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF’s values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, and Accountability (CRITA) and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results.

The UNICEF competencies required for this post are…

• Demonstrates Self Awareness and Ethical Awareness (1)
• Works Collaboratively with others (1)
• Builds and Maintains Partnerships (1)
• Innovates and Embraces Change (1)
• Thinks and Acts Strategically (1)
• Drive to achieve impactful results (1)
• Manages ambiguity and complexity (1)

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

Click here to learn more about UNICEF’s values and competencies.

UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Remarks:

Mobility is a condition of international professional employment with UNICEF and an underlying premise of the international civil service.

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

This position is not considered an elevated risk role. However, UNICEF reserves the right to conduct further vetting/ assessment within the scope of child safeguarding as appropriate.

UNICEF only considers higher educational qualifications obtained from an institution accredited/recognized in the World Higher Education Database (WHED), a list updated by the International Association of Universities (IAU) / United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The list can be accessed at http://www.whed.net/

The VA is open to all (internal and external) candidates.