During his 15-year tenure with the international consulting firm Accenture, Shapiro established and led their Global Process Excellence Practice, delivering innovation training to 20,000 consultants. In 2001 he left the management consulting world to write his first book, “24/7 Innovation: A Blueprint for Surviving and Thriving in an Age of Change”. Featured in “Newsweek,” “Investors Business Daily,” and the “New York Times,” among other prestigious publications, the book outlines his step-by-step program for instilling a mind-set of ongoing innovation within an organization to achieve and sustain a leadership position in any market.

 

Drawing on his corporate expertise, Shapiro expanded on his innovative concepts to counsel on how individuals, as well as businesses, can realize their full potential with less effort and more personal satisfaction. Thus, his latest book, “Goal Free Living: How to Have the Life You Want NOW!” (Wiley) was conceived, quickly becoming the #1 Amazon.com “Business Motivation” best seller and the subject of a recent cover story in “O, The Oprah Magazine.” Also heralded in “Entrepreneur Magazine” and on Tom Peters.com, among many others, Shapiro has become the modern-day Pied Piper for those interested in a revolutionary approach for personal and business success.

 

Articulate, knowledgeable, and provocative, Shapiro quickly captures the attention of his audience in a style that is equally as innovative and inventive as his subject matter. He has presented his own tried-and-tested formula for success to hundreds of thousands of people in 28 countries. Among the dozens of leading organizations he has advised are Staples, GE, Fidelity Investments, Pearson Education, BMW, Frito Lay, UPS, Xerox, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.

 

Stephen is a past-President for the New England Chapter of the National Speakers Association. When he is not motivating audiences around the world, he enjoys scuba diving, wine tasting, and playing the tenor saxophone.

 

Your organization’s ability to innovation 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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

 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.

 

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.

 

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.