Stephen Shapiro

Stephen Shapiro spent 15 years at Accenture establishing and leading their Global Process Excellence Practice, training 20,000 consultants in innovation methodology. When he left in 2001 to write and speak full-time, he brought a practitioner’s understanding of what makes innovation strategies succeed in the real world versus what merely sounds good in a boardroom.

From Accenture to the Innovation Conversation

His first book, 24/7 Innovation: A Blueprint for Surviving and Thriving in an Age of Change, published by McGraw-Hill and featured in Newsweek, Investors Business Daily, and the New York Times, established him as a rigorous voice in the innovation space. His follow-up, Goal Free Living, became the number one Amazon Business Motivation bestseller and the subject of a cover story in O, The Oprah Magazine. It has since been praised by Entrepreneur Magazine and Tom Peters.

Personality, Innovation, and the Power of Better Questions

Shapiro’s research led him to develop Personality Poker, a framework connecting individual personality types to distinct innovation roles within teams. His insight that organizations innovate more effectively when they ask better questions — rather than simply generating more ideas — has reshaped how companies approach innovation strategy.

Stephen Shapiro’s keynote presentations give organizations practical tools for building innovation cultures, understanding the personalities on their teams, and asking the kinds of questions that lead to breakthroughs rather than incremental improvements.

Innovation Personality Poker
Your organization’s ability to innovate would be supercharged if every employee understood how they contribute to – and detract from – the innovation process. To help provide these insights, we developed a highly interactive game called “Innovation Personality Poker.” All participants trade specially designed poker cards with each other. The objective is to get a perfect hand that reveals your preferred innovation style and how you can best contribute to the success of your organization. It will also help you build high performing innovation teams within your organization.

The Performance Paradox – Increasing Human Performance
Every leader dreams of finding the magic bullet that will increase creativity, boost productivity, and improve morale. Surprisingly, one of the most effective solutions may be the most counter-intuitive: sometimes less effort, not more, yields optimal results. To create a pervasive culture of innovation, you must first create an environment of performance and motivation. Although goals and performance targets are useful tools, they can also have a detrimental impact on results. When people are too future-fixated, their creativity and overall performance diminish. Find the sweet spot of optimal performance, and you will undoubtedly see an increase in employee productivity, creativity, and satisfaction—all with less effort.

Speed Ideating – Breakthrough Thinking at Breakneck Speeds
An innovative organization is built on new ideas. But what if your employees lack the skills to think creatively? The good news is, everyone is creative. Unfortunately many have learned bad habits that stop innovation from emerging. “Speed Ideating” is a hands-on, rapid fire creativity session where you will learn radical, and pragmatic, techniques for solving your most pressing business problems. During this fast-paced, engaging, and highly interactive speech, you will gain powerful insights into problem statement development, techniques for generating breakthrough ideas, and tools for enhancing team creativity. You leave with practical solutions. More importantly, you will be armed with powerful techniques that you can use on a daily basis.

Institutionalizing Innovation – Creating a 24/7 Innovation Culture
Change is the only constant in business. And when the pace of change outside of your organization is greater than the pace of change within, you will be out of business. How can you survive and thrive in this highly volatile environment? Only through the creation of a pervasive culture of innovation in your organization – an environment where innovation is as natural as breathing. In this keynote, you will learn tips for systematically moving from ad-hoc to organic innovation. Hear what leading edge companies are doing today, and what you can do tomorrow.

Creating an Innovation Strategy
Your organization must be aligned behind a clearly defined innovation strategy. But do you know what yours is? Do you know how innovation can help you beat the competition? Do you know how to target innovation within your organization? Do you know how your innovation strategy translates into a direct blueprint for change? This speech will give you a specific framework for creating lasting results in your organization.

Process Innovation
It’s one thing to benchmark a competitor and attempt to match them stride for stride. It’s quite another to take the lead with product and process innovation. With Shapiro’s 7R’s – a powerful tool for reinvigorating your company’s processes – the competition will be looking up at what you’re doing and trying to figure out what they’ve missed. Loaded with practical examples.