Stephen Shapiro Headshot
Report a problem with this profile
[email protected]

Stephen Shapiro          

Innovation Consultant & Bestselling Author of "Personality Poker" and "Best Practices Are Stupid"

Stephen Shapiro is one of the foremost authorities on innovation culture, collaboration, and open innovation. Many large corporate meetings and conferences kick off their event with him. He 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, he is able to see what others can’t: opportunities to improve innovation models and the cultures that support them.

The first innovation opportunity Shapiro spotted was the opportunity to innovate within his own life. Halfway through his 15-year tenure at Accenture, while co-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, he 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. His sixth book, Invisible Solutions, published in 2020.

Today, he 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, his high-energy approach to innovation gets audiences out of their seats and into new ways of thinking about their business challenges.

Shapiro just finished serving a six-year term 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 has a degree from Cornell University in Industrial Engineering, which has helped him optimize the entire innovation process using the engineering techniques he learned there.

He was also involved with Girl Starter, a movement that encourages and enables young women to launch their own businesses. He was a judge and mentor on the television show (TLC) and has supported the speaking tour and other endeavors.

Stephen Shapiro is based in Orlando, Florida and loves traveling to meet his clients around the world.

Speech Topics


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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Related Speakers View all


More like Stephen