What Stephen Shapiro Talks About:

Stephen Shapiro eats, breaths, drinks, and sleeps innovation. All of his keynotes focus on innovation and are designed to improve collaboration, create an efficient innovation engine, and enhance the creative abilities of each and every person.

He has delivered his groundbreaking keynotes in over 40 countries to hundreds of thousands of people.

Below you will find descriptions of his most frequently requested topics. Each speech is tailored to your specific needs and are typically based on the content from his Personality Poker and/or Best Practices Are Stupid books.

Leading through Uncertainty
In our fast-paced modern world, workplace burnout and confusion have become the norm.

But it doesn’t need to be this way.

Stephen Shapiro offers a powerful antidote to the dizzying spinning that has plagued so many organizations: Depth.

Depth provides stability, both professionally and personally. By focusing on what truly matters, we can strengthen our capacity to distinguish genuine opportunities from mere distractions.

Depth is more than a concept—it’s a practical skill akin to a basketball player executing a pivot. While one foot moves in a circular motion, the other remains anchored to the ground. The unsung hero is the foot that doesn’t move, as it provides the solid foundation and stability needed for future shifts.

This speech champions the planted foot. By focusing on what doesn’t—and shouldn’t—change, you can build a robust foundation that supports future shifts without wasting valuable resources on bright shiny objects or fleeting fads.

The emphasis has always been on what’s next. But sometimes, we need to focus on what’s now. Where do we double down our efforts to achieve extraordinary returns today and tomorrow?

This positions you and your organization to shift from a place of power. It involves knowing where to channel your resources for the greatest impact, allowing you to offer clarity and direction to your employees—and in the process, becoming irreplaceable to your customers.

Stop the spinning and start winning.

Innovate the Way You Innovate: Instilling a Pervasive Culture of Innovation
Well-intentioned leaders, in their attempts to boost innovation, are inadvertently destroying it. What if everything you know about creating a culture of innovation is wrong? What if the way you are measuring innovation is choking it? What if your market research is asking all of the wrong questions? 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. This educational experience brings to life the concept in Stephen Shapiro’s latest book: Best Practices Are Stupid. Some things you will learn is why?

• You should hire people you don’t like. Bring the right mix of people to unleash your team’s full potential;
• Asking for ideas is a bad idea. Define challenges more clearly. If you ask better questions, you will get better answers;
• You don’t want to think outside the box. In fact, you want to find a better box. Instead of giving your employees a blank slate, provide them with well-define parameters that will increase their creative output; and
• Failure is always an option. Looking at innovation as a series of experiments allows you to redefine failure and learn from your results.

This keynote is customized to address the specific topics of greatest interest to your audience.

Innovation Personality Poker: Creating High Performing Innovation Teams
Contrary to conventional wisdom, opposites do not attract. As a result, in business, we tend to surround ourselves with people who are similar to us. Although this is great for efficiency, this lack of diversity can kill innovation. How can you increase your innovation potential? Come play poker with author Stephen Shapiro. While playing this fast-paced, highly interactive game, you will discover:

• Your primary innovation style and your innovation blind spots;
• Why the person you like the least is the person you need the most; and
• How to create a high-performing innovation team that leverages divergent points of view.

This is the most interactive keynote you will ever experience. And we have done it with audiences as large as 1|000 people. This is an incredible way to kick off your conference as it will set the tone for the rest of your event.

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.

This content is typically woven into a speech which address other concepts related to innovation performance, measurements and motivation.

SpeedIdeating: Breakthrough Thinking at Breakneck Speeds
An innovative organization is built on finding better solutions to emerging opportunities. 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. SpeedIdeating 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.

Process Innovation: Rethinking How You Do What You Do
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.