Stephen M. Shapiro

Innovation Keynote Speaker and Management Consultant

Stephen’s career started after he earned a degree in industrial engineering from Cornell University. His focus was on improving manufacturing productivity. Although Stephen didn’t know it at the time, this was the perfect field of study for the work he would eventually do.

Right out of college, Stephen joined Arthur Andersen’s Management Consulting Division (now Accenture, the global management consulting firm). His first big career opportunity came in 1993, when he helped run their Business Process Reengineering practice. This optimization work was a natural build on Stephen’s industrial engineering work. Instead of improving manufacturing productivity, they focused on improving business productivity.

After a few years of promoting this work, he experienced an existential crisis when he realized that their process improvement work had led to massive downsizing. During a leave of absence, Stephen evaluated what he wanted to do with his life and he realized he wanted to help companies grow. And, since 1996, innovation has been his focus.

Stephen was lucky to be given the opportunity to lead a twenty-thousand-person process and innovation practice. He gave speeches and workshops to consultants and clients around the world, promoting their perspectives on innovation.

In 2001, he made another shift: he wrote his first book, 24/7 Innovation: A Blueprint for Surviving and Thriving in an Age of Change (McGraw Hill), left Accenture, and branched out on his own.

Since then, he has written seven books. Stephen’s previous book, Best Practices Are Stupid: 40 Ways to Out-Innovate the Competition (Portfolio Penguin), was named the best innovation and creativity book of 2011 by 800-CEO-READ (now Porchlight). Personality Poker®️ (Portfolio Penguin), which is both a book and a card game, has been used in twenty-five countries around the world to create high-performing innovation teams.

Stephen has had the great luxury of traveling the world and giving speeches in more than fifty countries. He is a Senior Fellow with The Conference Board. In 2017, he was a judge and mentor on the TLC innovation reality television show, Girl Starter. And, in 2015, he was bestowed one of the highest honors of the speaking profession: he was inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame.

When not speaking on stage, Stephen enjoys practicing magic and making the impossible possible. Stephen lives in Orlando, Florida, where he gets to enjoy the most amazing life with his wife.