Business Innovation Speaker and Consultant Stephen Shapiro

Funny Innovation Quotes (video)

Stephen Shapiro — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 12:00:57 +0000

A client of mine developed this video for a conference. They showed it as people entered the room and got seated. It contains some VERY funny quotes about innovation and change. Be sure to watch in full screen, add your own music, and enjoy!

Doing Nothing to Enhance Creativity

Stephen Shapiro — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 14:58:15 +0000

We are in such a fast paced society that we are always focused on achieving our goals. In business, these goals might be hitting quarterly earnings targets, sales quotas, or operating budgets. Even innovation initiatives are goal-driven. We measure ideas generated, time-to-market, and percent of revenue from new products. We are indeed a goal-driven society. [...]

From Tarot Cards to Poker Cards to Personality Poker

Stephen Shapiro — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 12:00:24 +0000

The video above is a beautiful rendition of Sting’s “Shape of My Heart.” In it, he tells the history of poker cards. In my upcoming book, “Personality Poker,” I had an appendix which discussed the history of poker cards and how this led to the Personality Poker card game. But when it came time for [...]

Are You Smarter than a PhD?

Stephen Shapiro — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 14:14:00 +0000

“Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?” is an entertaining show. In the world of innovation, the biggest question is, “Are you smarter than a PhD?” Here’s what I mean… In Personality Poker we address four primary innovation styles. The spades are the ones who are, as we would say in Boston, “wicked smaht.” We [...]

Speaking @ NASA

Stephen Shapiro — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 14:39:58 +0000

Tonight I am speaking at NASA’s annual inventors awards banquet. I’m honored to be speaking there again. For those of you who missed it, here was my last presentation to NASA. That time I had only 6 minutes! This time I have a whopping 20 minutes. Click the bottom right button on the video player [...]

You Failed! What’s Next?

Stephen Shapiro — Mon, 24 May 2010 15:16:58 +0000

Last week, I had 3 conversations with 3 different companies. And each had a complaint about the same group of people: lawyers. If you think about it, innovators and lawyers have completely opposite objectives. Innovators want to grow the business. They believe that risk and failure are a natural part of the innovation process. Their [...]

Redefining Failure

Stephen Shapiro — Wed, 12 May 2010 16:42:48 +0000

I view life as a series of experiments. When you look at it through this lens, failure means something completely different. One definition of an experiment is: “A test or investigation, especially one planned to provide evidence for or against a hypothesis.” The only way an experiment can fail is if you don’t get the [...]

Measures: Will You Get What You Want?

Stephen Shapiro — Mon, 10 May 2010 15:00:10 +0000

I recently spoke with a new client who shared with me their innovation measures. When I looked at their measurement system, I immediately saw flaws. But before addressing these imperfections, let me first provide you my perspective on innovation measures. In general, there are three types of measures associated with “challenge-based” innovation (be sure to [...]

There is No GPS for Innovation

Stephen Shapiro — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 15:42:50 +0000

OK, after 2 weeks of sleep deprivation due to manuscript deadlines, I am now back in action here. The final version of the manuscript went to the publisher on Saturday. I then played Personality Poker in Memphis with nearly 100 representatives from Penguin’s gift sales on Sunday. These individuals sell books into non-traditional bookstores, [...]

NESTA Open Innovation Conference Videos

Stephen Shapiro — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 16:35:50 +0000

Last week I spoke at an event hosted by NESTA – the UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology, and the Arts. The day focused on Open Innovation and had some spectacular speakers including Cheryl Perkins (the former Chief Innovation Officer for Kimberly-Clark), Karim Lakhani (an open innovation guru from Harvard Business School), Stefan Lindegaard (a [...]