Fast Facts

Capstone is seeking a Senior Director of New Product Innovation and Growth to lead the development of new digital products aimed at enhancing literacy for children while generating significant revenue. This role involves overseeing the entire product lifecycle, from concept to launch, and requires strong leadership and strategic skills.

Responsibilities: Key responsibilities include managing the product innovation process, conducting market research, developing business cases for new products, and ensuring successful market adoption to generate targeted revenue outcomes.

Skills: Candidates should possess strong analytical and strategic thinking skills, experience in product development and management, excellent communication abilities, and a passion for education.

Qualifications: A Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field is required, with an MBA or advanced degree preferred, alongside over 10 years of relevant experience in product innovation or management.

Location: This position is based in Edina, MN, with the option for fully remote work for the right candidate.

Compensation: $148000 - $223000 / Annually

Description

Capstone's Senior Director of New Product Innovation and Growth is accountable for identifying, building, launching, and scaling new content-driven digital products that help kids learn and build their literacy skills while creating meaningful new revenue streams. This role explores market needs and opportunities, develops innovative product concepts, assesses acquisition opportunities, and creates strategies to extend existing or new content into new formats and channels. 

This is a hands-on product role that owns the full lifecycle from early customer/market insights and product concepts through development, launch and market adoption, with a clear expectation to deliver $5M+ in new product revenue within 3 years of the product’s launch. This is a high-visibility mission within Capstone, with direct accountability to Capstone’s Executive team and regular checkpoints with the Board and Ownership.

The ideal candidate brings their fast pace and experience navigating ambiguity. This role uses creativity and customer insight to drive tangible, high-impact results. The successful candidate will bring a strong product development sensibility, consumer or education go-to-market expertise, and a track record of turning ideas into scalable, revenue producing products.  

Our preference is for this role to be hybrid, based out of our Edina, MN location. However, fully remote work may also be considered for the right candidate.

Why You’ll Want To Join Capstone

Have you ever read something that increased your understanding of the world around you? An article, a book, a research paper, a piece of local legislation, even a poem or short story?

Capstone is a mission-driven community of passionate, creative people like you who believe in the power of literacy. Our mission is to make reading fun for kids, so that they never experience literacy as the barrier that prevents them from understanding and engaging with the world around them.

For more than 30 years, Capstone has led the way in K–5 educational publishing, creating award-winning books and digital learning experiences (PebbleGo). The information landscape has changed dramatically since we first started out in 1991, and competition for kids’ attention is at an all-time high. This changing landscape inspires our continued growth and innovation – today’s kids need trusted sources of content more than ever, but their standards for what’s considered engaging have never been higher! At Capstone, we’re excited by that challenge – are you?

Your Responsibilities:

Drive the development, launch, and go-to-market activities for new products. Including the initial innovation and design cycles through product development, launch, and successful market adoption. Key activities include:

• Implementing and owning responsibility for a structured product innovation process, with rapid iterative product prototyping, feedback, and market analysis cycles.
• Hands-on product development work and user and market research – with a mix of independent work and cross-functional collaboration with design, engineering, content, finance, and sales team members.
• Assessing partnership and “build vs. buy” opportunities.
• Creating a business case for a product and market target that will generate $5M in new revenue for Capstone in 3 years.
• Defining success metrics during the innovation process and post-launch phases, including product impact/outcomes, user engagement, market adoption, and revenue goals. 
• Defining, hiring, and managing the development and go-to-market teams required for different phases of the product and go-to-market build out.
• P&L accountability for the new product post-launch.

Education, Experience, and Skills desired:

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, Education, Media, or a related field; MBA or advanced degree preferred.
• 10+ years of experience in product innovation and management, business development, or content strategy.
• 5+ years of experience successfully building and scaling new products, ventures, or businesses with direct ownership of outcomes. 
• Demonstrated experience in identifying growth opportunities and launching product from concept to commercialization, with at least one example of a product generating $3+ in revenue. 
• Strong analytical and strategic thinking skills, with the ability to translate data into actionable insights.
• Hands-on product development/management experience. Content development experience a plus.
• Comfortable operating in a fast-paced, ambiguous, high-pressure environment with significant executive visibility. 
• A collaborative, energetic, and dynamic leader who is comfortable working both independently and in teams; navigating ambiguous situations; and supporting change initiatives.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills, with experience working with executive leadership.
• Experience in acquisitions, partnerships, or licensing preferred.
• Passion for content, media, education, and exploring innovative ways to reach audiences.
• Demonstrated ability to take calculated risks, fail fast, learn, and pivot quickly. 

Travel Requirements

This position requires some travel (Up to 10%).

Inclusion & Belonging

Capstone embraces equal opportunity and a culture of belonging for all employees and applicants. We are an Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer. All candidate information will be kept private according to EEO guidelines. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request to [email protected].

The pay range for this role takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered surrounding compensation including but not limited to: skill sets, experience and training, work location, and other business and organizational needs. At Capstone, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at the top of the range for their role. A reasonable estimate of the annual pay range for this position is $148,000 - $223,000.

Capstone strives to provide comprehensive and market-competitive benefits to meet the needs of our employees and their families. Click here to see our benefits.

Pre-Employment Background Check Required

California Applicants:

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Employment Authorization:

At this time Capstone unfortunately cannot sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa. To be considered for one of our roles, applicants must be authorized to work in the United States.