Innovation Manager Europe

Nippon Sanso is one of the leading companies in the industrial and medical gases business in Europe. Serving over 150,000 customers and 350,000 patients across 14 countries, we offer a comprehensive range of gas-based solutions tailored to sectors including healthcare, food, electronics, manufacturing, chemicals, electronics, and energy among many others.

The Innovation Manager Europe will be based in our headquarters in Madrid, reporting to Innovation Program Director, and is responsible for strengthening the European innovation and Development pipeline by identifying, evaluating, and accelerating new technologies, business models, partnerships, and application opportunities that create measurable business value.

The role acts as a central connector between European business units, R D teams, global innovation and R D functions, customers, universities, research institutes, start-ups, accelerators, incubators, and external technology ecosystems.

Key responsibilities

Lead Front End Innovation activities across Europe by collecting, structuring, and evaluating early-stage ideas, unmet customer needs, technology trends, and emerging business opportunities. Establish and maintain a structured scouting process for technologies, start-ups, universities, research institutes, industrial partners, and innovation ecosystems relevant to European strategic focus areas.

Monitor start-up landscapes and emerging ventures in priority domains such as sustainability, industrial transformation, electronics, healthcare, food and beverage, water, aquaculture, automation, digitalization, and advanced manufacturing. Build relationships with accelerators, incubators, venture networks, technology hubs, public funding bodies, and innovation platforms to identify collaboration opportunities and strengthen the external innovation pipeline.

Screen and assess external opportunities using clear criteria such as strategic fit, market potential, technology maturity, scalability, intellectual property position, partnership potential, investment need, and expected business impact. Translate promising ideas into clear opportunity briefs, pre-studies, feasibility proposals, business hypotheses, and pilot project recommendations.

Collaborate with R D, business units, segment experts, sales, marketing, operations, engineering, sustainability, digitalization, and government affairs to validate opportunities and define the right path forward. Support the European innovation and development roadmap by identifying gaps, white spaces, technology trends, and potential partnerships aligned with medium-term strategic priorities.

Coordinate innovation workshops, ideation sessions, start-up challenge formats, technology scouting campaigns, and cross-functional evaluation meetings. Maintain an innovation funnel and reporting dashboard covering scouted opportunities, start-up contacts, ecosystem interactions, active evaluations, pre-studies, and recommended next steps.

Support the design and continuous improvement of innovation governance, including stage-gate criteria, prioritization logic, decision templates, and handover processes to project owners. Contribute to technology replication and adoption by identifying solutions from other regions, partners, or markets that can be adapted and scaled in Europe.

Represent the European innovation function in selected external events, conferences, accelerator demo days, start-up meetings, university engagements, and internal innovation forums.