Stephen Shapiro cultivates innovation by showing leaders and their teams how to approach, tackle and solve their business challenges. Applying the knowledge he has accrued over decades in the industry, Stephen is able to see what others can’t: opportunities to improve innovation models and the cultures that support them.
The first innovation opportunity Stephen spotted was the opportunity to innovate within his own life. Halfway through his 15-year tenure at Accenture, while leading the company’s business process reengineering practice, he realized he no longer wanted to be responsible for people losing their jobs. So he did exactly the opposite by building Accenture’s thriving 20,000-person process and innovation practice focused on growth and job creation.
In 2001, after publishing his first book, 24/7 Innovation, Stephen left Accenture to become a full-time innovation speaker and advisor to clients around the world. Since then he has published four more books – Goal-Free Living (2006), The Little Book of Big Innovation Ideas (2007), Personality Poker (2010) and Best Practices are Stupid (2011) — and spoken to audiences in 50 different countries.
Today, Stephen continues to focus on transforming the way businesses like 3M, P&G, Marriott, Nike, and Microsoft improve innovation practices through customized keynote speeches, advisory engagements and other services. Passionate and captivating, Stephen’s high-energy approach to innovation gets audiences out of their seats and into new ways of thinking about their business challenges.
Stephen currently serves on the Board of Directors of National Speakers Association (NSA) and is the recipient of the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation, NSA’s highest earned designation. In 2015 he was inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame.
He is also actively involved with Girl Starter. He is a judge and mentor on the television show (TLC) and has supported the speaking tour and other endeavors. The goal is to encourage and enable your women to launch their own businesses.
Stephen is based in Orlando, Florida and loves traveling to meet his clients around the world.
Quit Thinking Outside the Box—Find a Better Box
Well-intentioned leaders, in their attempts to boost innovation, are inadvertently destroying it. What if “thinking outside the box” actually kills innovation? What if failure is not a necessary component of innovation? It’s time to innovate the way you innovate.
During this customizable and interactive keynote, you will discover that innovation isn’t just about generating occasional new ideas; it’s about staying consistently one step ahead of the competition. This enlightening experience brings to life the concept in Stephen Shapiro’s latest book, Best Practices Are Stupid.
You will discover why:
You don’t want to innovate everywhere. Avoid trying to improve every aspect of your business. Instead, “innovate where you differentiate.” Focus your energy where there is the greatest potential impact.
Asking for ideas is a bad idea. Avoid suggestion boxes or abstract questions. They create a lot of noise and wasted energy. Instead, provide well-framed challenges to increase creative output. “Don’t think outside the box, find a better box.”
Expertise is the enemy of innovation. Breakthroughs are rarely developed by experts within your industry or area of specialization. Instead, reframe your challenge to find solutions elsewhere.
The pragmatic approaches shared in “Innovate the Way You Innovate” have increased innovation ROI tenfold or more.
“Stephen’s passion for innovation is infectious. His mandate to focus innovation relentlessly on well-articulated problems has caused an internal shift in mindset and approach for our innovators. Personality Poker is a thought-provoking and fun approach to understanding and leveraging diversity. Stephen delivers both in a way that is truly inspirational and actionable.”
“Stephen brought incredible energy and highly relevant messages that made it possible for us to rethink our innovation principles and extend them to our customer-facing functions. His thought provoking insights pushed us to re-examine our mental models and spark new ideas for innovation with and for our customers. Stephen has a fun and highly infectious style and could be an asset to any organization trying to make innovation a reality.”
“Stephen Shapiro, according to the evaluation forms, was among the best in a strong roster of speakers at our 2013 Innovation Master Class Conference held at 3M’s Innovation Center. The positive written-in comments further reflected the value that our sold-out crowd of innovation leaders received. His style is interactive while delivering practical but unique perspectives, which challenge all to new thinking. Personal stories of professional experiences add the measure of ‘memorability’ that helped the stickiness and authenticity of the messages as well. We are delighted to work with Stephen and thought we should share a few verbatims from those forms: ‘very entertaining but more importantly extremely informative and thought provoking’, ‘highlight of the conference for me’ and ‘excellent, energetic’.”
