A short speaking reel of Stephen Shapiro presenting his approach to innovation: effective innovation begins by reframing challenges rather than immediately seeking solutions. Shapiro emphasizes the power of question wording (changing even one word) and offers practical lenses (e.g., shifting from transactions to relationships) to drive purposeful, scalable organizational change and relevance.
Chapters
What if the fastest way for finding better solutions to your most difficult problems is to stop looking for solutions? What if having all the answers isn't the answer? Effective innovation does not start with suggestion boxes, asking for ideas, or even thinking outside the box. It starts with important differentiating and well framed challenges. And the reason most organizations struggle to make innovation a reality is, is they don't have a scalable and systematic process for solving their problems. The way we ask a question has a profound impact on the brain and the way it tries to solve problems. Changing the question changes everything about the way the brain operates and leads us to different answers. So to me, the key to innovation is it's not just about change for change sake. It is about purposeful change that keeps you relevant. Create jobs, can create wealth. And I believe that we've just been doing it the wrong way for too long. Instead of asking how can we reduce wait time? We could ask the question, how can we improve wait time? Now we're not talking about the speed, we're talking about the experience. How can I improve the wait experience? If you're solving the wrong problem, you will never get the right answer. I spend a lot of time with companies helping them understand why changing even one word in a question can have a profound impact on the solutions that they develop. So how do we start to look at the problem of how do we increase the rate of sales? The axis lens says, let's move away from the mindset of transactions to one of building relationships. Instead of selling products, we might be selling a lifetime subscription to unlimited upgrades. Everyone will get a copy of these 25 lenses to be able to use to solve your most difficult problem. Very simple, but it's very powerful. Steven's perspective, honed over decades, really is malleable and valuable to basically any type of organization that I can think of. I can't say, even though it was virtual, it was almost better because it was virtual. Are you capable of doing innovation? And now we realize actually everybody is capable. If you're really looking for some positive change in your organization, he will be the person who can inspire that excitement. Innovation, to me, is the key to staying relevant. It is a process for helping companies adapt, evolve and change repeatedly and rapidly.
