Author of "Best Practices are Stupid"
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 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 over 40 different countries.
Today, Stephen continues to focus on transforming the way businesses like 3M, P&G, Marriott, Nike, and Microsoft to improve their innovation practices through customized and 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 is currently 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.Stephen is based in Boston, Massachusetts and loves traveling to meet his clients around the world.
On the show, Stephen spoke about the danger of following “best practices,” in that they are the result of studying successes and potentially missing the examples of companies who followed the practices and failed, and even in the best circumstances, “best practices” are already the old news of the companies that pioneered them. In addition, he discussed how to make innovation tournaments more effective within a company, and how firms need partnerships to get the outside perspective needed to foster genuinely breakthrough innovation for long-term success.
