Innovation Specialist

About SPARK

SPARK develops higher education and entrepreneurship to empower young, ambitious people to lead their fragile and conflict-affected societies into prosperity. SPARK is a dynamic and growing, international not-for-profit development organisation with 100+ staff members, in more than 14 offices around the world. SPARK supports refugees in the Middle-East by providing them with scholarships in universities and higher education institutions in the region. SPARK also supports young entrepreneurs in fragile states, to start or grow their own businesses.

SPARK is launching a new regional programme funded by the European Commission. Aimed at strengthening the local start-up ecosystems and its actors in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Tunisia in order to support innovation, employment and economic growth.

The innovation specialist will work directly with programme partners and stakeholders on topics ranging from needs assessments, fostering private sector linkages, capacity building of partners, business incubators and accelerators, development of training materials and toolkits, as well as providing support on selection of beneficiaries. She/he is also expected to travel between the four target countries.

The responsibilities and tasks include, but are not limited to:

• Design innovative start-up/scale-up activities with the country teams and selected partners;
• Support the country teams to expand on private sector networks and database of relevant business development service providers, including strengthening relations with the chambers of commerce, business associations, business incubators, accelerators and support networks to foster partnerships and enhance support services provided,
• Support partners to map local business development services providers, and capacity building needs,
• Identify ‘innovative’ partners and business approaches with high growth potential in the four countries of implementation, with a specific focus on digitalization, ‘green’ entrepreneurship and ‘social’ entrepreneurship,
• Reviewing and updating SPARK activities over the course of implementation to align and update in accordance with new trends and sector developments,
• Support partners with the selection of beneficiaries and development of selection tools,
• Contribute to stakeholder and coordination meetings,
• Provide technical input and feedback on progress reports and impact evaluation reports as well as project proposals,
• Other tasks as required.

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Required Experience and Skills:

• Minimum of 7-10 years of relevant work experience in private sector development in one or more of the four countries of implementation,
• Experience working for/with business incubators and accelerators in one or more of the implementation countries.
• Experience working across different locations, cultures, and contexts.
• Ability and willingness to travel internationally.
• Excellent interpersonal and verbal communication skills.
• Advanced level (master's) university degree in business administration/MBA, international business, economic development, education and or relevant field.
• Experience with agile project management.
• Fluency in written and spoken English and Arabic

Preferred Experience & Skill Requirements:

• Start-up experience and/or experience in business coaching and training including development of materials and toolkits.
• Experience in business development or building partnerships between private sector companies and public bodies, NGOs or academic institutions,
• Experience working on digital and or social or green entrepreneurship
• Fluency in written and spoken French

SPARK Offers

• A challenging and exciting position in an international environment;

• Remuneration based on experience;

• Full-time contract 40h/per week;
• Training opportunities.

If you are interested, please apply with your motivation letter and your CV (both in English) on vacancy.spark-online.org/Tab1/LoadProfileFromVacancy/367 until 13 February 2022. Please, with application send to us three references (phone number and email) which we can contact in the selection process.

All applications will be assessed on a rolling basis; interviews can, therefore, take place before the application deadline. However, due to the large volume of applications we receive, we cannot respond to every applicant. There may be a delay between the deadline and the moment we contact selected applicants.

If you have not received a reply we regret to inform that we have continued with other candidates.