Product Operating-Model Reset Leader

The mandate

The connected-diagnostics portfolio is governed as dozens of projects: instrument hardware, assay menus, embedded software, cloud analytics and field service receive separate budgets and meet at late steering committees. Releases miss clinically valuable windows because nobody owns the complete customer outcome or lifecycle economics. The board has authorised a temporary executive seat after the product chief departed and succession candidates were judged too embedded in the current functional bargains.

Over twelve months, the leader will establish durable product lines around diagnostic journeys, give named leaders authority across hardware and software boundaries, convert annual project allocations into outcome-based investment envelopes and introduce discovery, evidence and lifecycle practices compatible with design controls. The assignment must show improved decision speed without weakening clinical claims, regulatory submissions, cybersecurity assurance or the independence of quality.

The interim executive will recruit or confirm permanent product-line leaders by month six, coach them through two portfolio cycles and transfer the operating calendar, decision records, outcome metrics and unresolved trade-offs before departure. Handover is accepted only after successors have independently chaired investment, release and end-of-life decisions and can explain the economic and patient consequences of their choices to the board.

This seat may stop unfunded roadmap work, reallocate approved product investment within board thresholds, appoint product owners, change forum membership, require evidence before release commitments and recommend portfolio exits. It cannot approve a clinical claim, waive design-control evidence, accept patient-safety risk, sign a regulatory submission, alter executive compensation or exceed the annual capital envelope without the authorised client officer.

Success means a smaller set of coherent product missions, explicit ownership from discovery through installed-base retirement, evidence-linked funding and predictable choices across assay, instrument, software and service constraints. The remit excludes acting as head of quality, regulatory affairs or engineering; those functions retain independent obligations, while the interim leader resolves commercial and product integration within the delegated perimeter.

Why this seat is open

The previous product chief left after a portfolio review exposed years of fragmented accountability and postponed retirement decisions. Promoting a functional leader immediately would entrench one component’s priorities before the company has tested the new model. The board needs an experienced operator to make the contested choices now, develop credible successors and leave a system the permanent appointee can inherit rather than redesign.

What you will own

• Reframe the portfolio around diagnostic customer journeys, clinical outcomes, installed-base obligations and whole-product economics.
• Assign product-line decision rights spanning assay, instrument, embedded software, cloud analytics, service and commercial enablement.
• Replace project lobbying with evidence-based investment envelopes, discovery thresholds and explicit continuation, pivot or exit choices.
• Redesign portfolio forums so quality and regulatory challenge remain independent while integrated product decisions have one accountable owner.
• Establish measures for adoption, diagnostic utility, release predictability, service burden, cybersecurity exposure and lifecycle contribution.
• Select and coach permanent product-line leaders through live funding, claims, release and retirement decisions under board observation.
• Hand over the operating handbook, decision ledger, product missions, talent assessments and prioritised structural impediments.

Candidate qualifications

• Has led a product operating-model change across regulated diagnostic hardware, software, assays and post-market service operations.
• Can reconcile discovery learning and product autonomy with design controls, clinical evidence, quality systems and submission commitments.
• Has moved funding from temporary projects into persistent product lines while preserving capital discipline and transparent benefits logic.
• Has made defensible kill, defer and scale decisions where installed-base support and patient impact complicated pure commercial economics.
• Demonstrates succession building through candidates who exercised real portfolio authority before the interim executive completed the assignment.
• Can challenge engineering, regulatory and commercial leaders at equal depth without appropriating their independent professional accountabilities.

Non-negotiables

• Will be onsite in Boston for the core operating week and travel monthly to a named portfolio or regulatory hub.
• Must disclose interests involving diagnostic manufacturers, laboratory networks, regulators, investors and product-management consultancies.
• Brings direct leadership of connected regulated products; software-only agile transformation experience does not meet the mandate.
• Will document every material funding reallocation and preserve quality’s independent escalation route throughout the reset.

1. 49 words maximum. Which product decision exposed the weakness of component-by-component ownership in a regulated device business?
2. 49 words maximum. How would you fund discovery while preserving evidence required by design controls?
3. 49 words maximum. What would prove a permanent product-line leader is ready to inherit this seat?