Whats in a job title?

So i have not put much stock in what my title has been now for several years as what i do and what i achieve has determine the opportunities that are presented to me and my salary. When i arrived at my my new job they provided me with the title of Concept development leader, and for a company that is fairly new to design and development internally it seemed to lead to a fair bit of confusion. Especially with groups such as Engineering design and development / Industrial design and Development dept. / User Experience design and development…

So long story short we are trying to change the title of Concept development to something new. My boss doesn’t really care what i call myself (other than Director or Gran Poobah) but he asks that it be descriptive of my responsibilities and expectations. So i wanted to see what the folks on here could come up with (humor appreciated)

For insight here is the following information

I lead the concept development for our Professional and Retail for all Dixie products (think disposable tabletop ware)

My responsibilities in short are to

  1. provide solutions and conduct experimentation to ensure that identified needs are of value to the customer/technically feasible/and profitable.
  2. I lead internal and external teams
  3. I create the development strategies
  4. I am expected to identified missed needs and develop solutions to test and explore
  5. provide consultation to other groups on design and development process and strategies
  6. help every one form different department to play together nicely

That is the basic overview of it…

Thoughts / Opinions / Suggestions?
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What about Innovation Leader?

Or Advanced Design Leader?

So there is a separate ID department and another UX department?

Manager of Envisioning.

Non-Linear Solutions Architect.

Well they are kind of one in the same, they seem to keep re-branding themselves… so that adds a little to confusion. at its heart they Own VBL but can be a resource for any stage of development for leaders of various groups to tap into. Which seems to work fairly well

You could take a page out of Disney’s book and go with Imagineer.

Design & Development Ninja
Holistic Design Strategist

That One Guy/Gal Who Does That Thing. Over There.

I was thinking “yeah i can probably do that”

It seems you were in the spirit of my post. I have never been a fan of the oversell title. For example - VP of Business Coordination = entry-level sales dude.

Keep it simple. Try to stay with industry “norms”. You don’t want someone to ask, “What does that mean?”.

Why not NPD Leader? Although I am a bit confused by the duties of your engineering, ID and UX people and how they differ from you.

The big difference is where i live in our process(dependant on the needs of the project)
Domain
Opportunity area
Specific Opportunity exploration - i live hear
Commercialization and development - id and eng live hear

Basically what i do is once a OA such as hygienic cutlery dispenser is identified - i go out and determine what really means to the customer (needs want desires) based off that i develop a variety of solutions to test not only for technical feasibility but also for consumer acceptance and financial viability (my solutions utilize a minimal viable product approach) if and when a concept is deemed successful i would then help transition it to ID and Engineering for its final form and mechanical solution for manufacturing - while ensuring the customer / financial / technical needs are not lost… (i draw pretty pictures and build stuff and talk to people or i have others do it for me :laughing: )

I would go with CINO, Chief Innovation Officer
“Primarily responsible for managing the process of innovation in an organization, as well as being in some cases the person who originates new ideas but also recognizes innovative ideas generated by other people” - Chief innovation officer - Wikipedia

Or Chief NPD, Creative Director, Innovation Manager, Design Integrator.

Sounds like pretty much what we do here. Except we hand off to PE (product engineering). Also, we separate the duties you describe, one makes the solutions, another shows the solution to the customer.

I’d just add the word “New” to your title, “New Concept Development Leader”. Separates you from the other groups, it isn’t confusing to vendors and peers and is descriptive of what you do. I’ve seen titles that have “Front-End”, “Upstream”, “Visioneer” and bastardizations of “Innovat___” in them and while I can understand why they do it, I don’t think the benefits outweigh the confusion they cause.

I like your thought process iab.

Also thank you to everyone else as well.