PRINCIPAL STRATEGIST w/m/d
- Studio Stuttgart, München, Shanghai
- as of now
- 10+ years of experience
Principal Strategist (w/m/d) – Stuttgart, München, Shanghai
About us
As designers, we are responsible for re-inventing the world we live in. Phoenix is a design and innovation studio creating smart and substantial brand experiences that make eminent business sense and which touch people – today, for tomorrow. Since 1987, products, interactions, and digital ecosystems have been created based on the fundamental values of Logic, Morals, and Magic. More than 850 design awards (1st place – iF World Design Index, Design Studios) confirm the quality and continuity of the worldwide work, i. a. the award of honour "Red Dot: Design Team of the Year 2018". Today, the team comprising 80 international experts at the Stuttgart, Munich, and Shanghai locations – together with its partners – are creating a joint vision of Smart Living.
Your tasks
- At Phoenix Design, Principal strategists are insights-driven creators of original thought, expert innovation practitioners and scholars of design-culture. As such you will be working at the intersection of our clients, our creative teams and Phoenix Design's leadership team.
- Your key tasks will be to develop and articulate the creative vision and point of views that give voice to pitches, proposals, projects and public performances, and to lead and collaborate with our design teams to create insights-driven ideas and innovations - from concept to launch.
- In your engagements you will leverage your diverse set of experiences to conceive new ideas, and entice decision makers with insights and stories that smoothly blend academic theory, business knowledge and critical attitude.
- As a business-savvy creative consultant you are adept at managing and navigating uncertainty and complexity, and confident in taking on different roles with vastly different tasks, at different stages of each endeavour.
- Internally you will mentor, lead, direct and collaborate with our management board and creative teams to generate business, provide new perspectives, set new standards in method and knowledge, and create strategies, experiences, products and services that produce value for our clients, and enable them to grow their business.
- Externally you will be engaging company owners, C-level decision makers, project owners, but also the design-community, and deliver brilliant perspectives that will establish Phoenix Design as a thought leader for Smart Living.
Activities and Expectations
- Contribute business-oriented, strategic perspectives to all design activities in business development- and project-contexts
- Create compelling point of views, white papers and talks/presentations that position Phoenix Design as an authority on the notion of Smart Living.
- Identify, explore, understand and synthesise relevant industry-, socio- and techno-cultural trends and discourses that will inform and impact on client endeavours
- Design, plan, coordinate and conduct qualitative research activities
- Analyse and synthesise learnings from primary and secondary research into sharp, perfectly articulated design- and innovation-insights.
- Design, plan, lead and conduct inspiring creative- and innovation workshops with clients
- Frame, scope, detail and calculate project-visions, -deliverables, -plans and proposals that speak the clients mind,.
- Set up, lead and collaborate in medium- to high-complexity, multi-disciplinary projects, and manage your project-teams to deliver world-class deliverables that are on strategy, served in time and in budget.
Style and personality
- Generous and winning personality: charisma, confidence and compassion.
- Intellectual and emotional depth/breadth and natural authority
- Healthy humour with serious dedication to your craft, integrity and self-reflection/self-honesty
- Critical, yet open-minded attitude with a healthy balance of humility, swagger and optimism
- Balance between obsession with detail and shrewd improvisation, as well as creating new content and recycling existing materials.
- Highly insightful thinking delivered in a lucid and concise manner.
- Grit and resilience in the face of high workload, timing- and client-pressure.
Your expertise
- 10+ years of total work-experience in design-, innovation-, strategy- and/or branding-related fields, such as design- and innovation-consultancy, brand- and advertising agency, management consultancy.
- Authentic, bilingual storytelling-, presentation- and communication-skills: German + English (Stuttgart and Munich), Chinese + English (Shanghai)
- Masters degree in either a design- or strategy-related field and/or social sciences, anthropology or cultural studies
- Solid track record in leading, evaluating and directing both, industrial- and digital design- and innovation work.
- Solid track record in qualitative research and academic comprehension on how culture, research, strategy and design are related to each other
- Understanding of how design- and innovation create value for brands- and businesses
- Capability to identify, decode and simplify the underlying mechanisms of the complex and puzzling, and to bring them across ideas in short, savoury and sticky ways
- Solid project-framing skills: from identifying tacit business objectives, articulating project visions/pictures of success to defining approaches, deliverables and team-profiles for internal teams and clients.
Our offer
- A fun and passionate team that places high importance not only on professional skill but on great personality, as well as an honest and friendly way of being and working together
- A friendly, family-like work-environment, flextime workdays, home-office support and low levels of hierarchy
- An onboarding programme which will prepare you well for your new position, and you get a permanent job in a pleasant environment
- Opportunity to receive on- and off-the-job training, as well as travel to events, trade-shows and conferences
- Opportunity to work on a diverse range of projects with a diverse range of professionals – from researchers and technologists to industrial designers and model-makers
- Opportunity to work in our other Phoenix Design locations (Stuttgart, Munich) for project support
- Regular team-events – planned and spontaneous: from annual all-hands trips and X-mas parties, to ad-hoc Karaoke madness and of course the Oktoberfest
Interested?
We’re looking forward to your application!