Stephen Shapiro

Well-intentioned leaders, in their attempts to boost innovation, are inadvertently destroying it. What if “thinking outside the box” actually kills innovation? It’s time to innovate the way you innovate.

During this 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.

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. These create wasted energy that reduces your ROI. 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.

Create Your Best Innovation Culture

You’ve decided to invest in innovation.

You have a team of innovators ready to change your culture.

Now where do you begin?

Stephen’s presentation, consisting of content from his best-selling book, Best Practices are Stupid, is specifically designed for individuals tasked with making innovation a reality in your organization. Throughout this impressive presentation, Stephen will address a wide range of issues such as:

Why failure is bad but experimentation is good
How to measure innovation to ensure you are innovating efficiently
What organization structures help push innovation to the lowest levels of the organization
How to identify your organization’s differentiator and its impact on innovation
How to motivate everyone in the organization to participate in innovation
How to maximize your innovation ROI with a challenge-centered approach
“Innovation for Innovators” provides the basics and the specifics necessary for any company to create a pervasive culture of innovation.

Developing Breakthrough Solutions

Innovation isn’t just for innovators! It’s for everyone. This interactive keynote – which can be done with any size audience and is relevant to everyone – shares a number of practical techniques that anyone in your organization can use. For example, it can help:

Sales reps develop new and better ways of closing the deal
Marketers create more compelling and persuasive campaigns
IT develop better technology more rapidly with lower risk
HR professionals better engage employees and improve performance management
Manufacturing reduce costs and improve quality
Everyone be more productive and better at solving your business challenges

Some common activities include:

Make the impossible possible
This fun technique has its roots in magic and is fundamentally different than how most people solve problems.

Predict what the competition will do
A good source of creative inspiration is to look at what you fear your current – and future – competitors will do…and then beat them to the punch.

Make connections
Most people solve problems through their “expertise” lens. But this limits potential solutions. Instead, find someone else who has solved a similar problem.

Speaker’s Corner
Inspired by Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park, London, this technique is a free-market approach to developing solutions. It is fast, fun, and wildly efficient.