Currently, Best Practices are Stupid is the best selling business book in Canada.

Press Release…

Stephen M. Shapiro Joins Linkage in Elite Partnership

Business Consultant to Bring Methodology on Innovative Culture to Linkage’s Clients

Burlington, MA (PRWEB) February 02, 2012

Linkage, a global leadership development company, announced its partnership with innovation guru Stephen M. Shapiro. Mr. Shapiro has consulted with Fortune 500 corporations for nearly 20 years on the subject of innovation; specifically focused on bringing together divergent points of view in an efficient manner. His partnership will provide Linkage’s clients with his proven innovation methodology through hands-on leadership training programs.

“This partnership adds an important dimension to Linkage’s innovation offerings by teaching leaders how to make their organizations more capable of innovation. This is a common challenge that we hear from clients. We are very excited to partner with Mr. Shapiro to help organizations improve their results in this critical area, and are pleased to introduce his cutting-edge methodology as part of our suite of leadership development programs,” said Ron Porter, Regional VP and VP, Innovation Practice at Linkage.

As President and CEO of 24/7 Innovation, Mr. Shapiro has worked extensively with global organizations in over 40 countries. Prior to that, he trained more than 20,000 consultants in innovation during his 15 year tenure with Accenture. His latest book, Best Practices are Stupid: 40 Ways to Out-Innovate the Competition, has been featured on ABC News, CBS Interactive’s BNET, Southwest Airline’s Spirit Magazine, and Investor’s Business Daily, to name a few. Best Practices was selected as a best book on innovation by 800-CEO-READ. Mr. Shapiro also authored 24/7 Innovation, Personality Poker, and The Little Book of BIG Innovation Ideas. His Personality Poker® card game has been used by more than 50,000 people worldwide to create high-performing innovation teams.

“Given today’s frenetic pace of change, the organizations that repeatedly and rapidly adapt and evolve are the ones that will survive. This requires that innovation be treated like a capability rather than a series of ad hoc events. Linkage brings much more than training; they bring the ability to create sustainable change,” said Shapiro.

Shapiro will be featured in Linkage’s Thought Leader Series on How to Out-Smart the Competition on Wednesday, April 18, 2012. In his 90-minute broadcast, he will explore why innovation isn’t just about generating occasional new ideas; it’s about staying consistently one step ahead of the competition. To learn more about this elite partnership or Linkage’s Thought Leader Series call 781-402-5555.

Linkage works with leaders and leadership teams worldwide to build organizations that produce superior results. For over 25 years, they have delivered on this promise by strategically aligning leadership, talent, and culture within organizations globally. They do this by providing strategic consulting on leadership development and talent management topics and through their learning institutes, skill-building workshops, tailored assessment services, and executive coaching.

Linkage is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts with operations in Atlanta, Boston, New York, San Francisco, St. Louis and outside the U.S. in Athens, Bangalore, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Hamilton, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Johannesburg, Kuala Lumpur, Kuwait City, Mexico City, Rome, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney, Vilnius.

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http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/2/prweb9159674.htm

I am excited and honored to announce that my book, Best Practices Are Stupid: 40 Ways to Out-Innovate the Competition, was just named the best “innovation and creativity” book of 2011 by 800-CEO-READ.  Winners in other categories include Jim Collins, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Eric Ries.

You can see the entire list here on the 800-CEO-READ website.

Thank you to everyone at Portfolio/Penguin for helping make this book a reality.  And thanks to the great people at 800-CEO-READ for everything you do to promote business books.

P.S.  Jim Collins, congratulations for being selected as the best overall business book of 2011.

As some of you know, my 2012 business strategy is to license my content in a number of creative ways.

We already licensed Personality Poker in a variety of languages and to a number of trainers.  The Dutch translation is the most recent version and will be available in January.

And, just last week, we signed a major deal with one of the premier training organizations to take my content and convert it into workshops that will be delivered by their certified trainers.  This is exciting news as it will make my content more accessible to more organizations.

More details coming soon.

I’m pleased that the American Express OPEN Forum (via Matthew E. May) selected Best Practices Are Stupid as one of the top 15 books of 2011.  Check out the complete list

Also, Best Practices Are Stupid  was selected as one of the “Top-Drawer Business Books of 2011″ by the advertising agency, DDB.  See the complete list here

And, in case you missed it, there is an excellent review of the book on the Actionable Books website.  Read it here

You may have noticed that we redid this website.  The content from www.stupidpractices.com has been moved here.  We now highlight all 5 of my books on the top as well as more prominent links to buy them in the right sidebar.  And the overall design has been cleaned up and simplified.  I welcome ANY comments.  Thanks!

Ok, this may seem like an odd post.  Why would anyone want their iPhone to act like a BlackBerry?  Well, there are some things that the RIM folks got right.

I switched over to the iPhone 4S a couple of weeks ago, and there are a few features from my old CrackBerry that I miss.  I’ve been able to address most of them.  Sadly, the blinking red indicator light that told me when I had an email is not doable on the iPhone.  But here are three other workarounds that you may find useful/interesting.

Push Mail: I use a regular IMAP email server that does not have push capabilities.  I don’t want to bother updating to an Exchange Server or anything like that.  But I also don’t want to wait for the iPhone to “fetch” my mail.  The solution?  An app called “PushMail.”  For five bucks, it gives you push notifications, it is amazingly simple to set up and gives you more flexibility than you can even get with the BlackBerry.  It is my favorite iPhone app by far.

Music Ring Tones: I like assigning songs as the ring tone for people.  One friend might have the theme to South Park while my default is the theme from the James Bond movies.  Unfortunately on the iPhone you can’t do that by simply linking the person to the song in your music library.  The solution?  Create a ringtone in GarageBand.  It is incredibly easy to drag a song from iTunes on your computer into GarageBand, select the 30 seconds you want, and then save it as a ring tone.  Copy the file into iTunes and synch.

Only Ring for Select People: The BlackBerry has some amazing ring profile capabilities.  I could, for example, keep the phone silent, except for some individuals.  If I am waiting for an important call but don’t want to be disturbed by anyone else, I could do that on the BlackBerry, but not the iPhone.  The solution? Create a blank/silent ring tone.  When you want silence, set that ring tone as the default.  Then, for those who you want to hear, go into the contact and assign a non-silent ring tone.

I’ve been tinkering around with some other fun things and may post some tips here from time to time.

I am happy to announce that my next book will be published by Portfolio Penguin on September 29, 2011.

The title?

Best Practices Are Stupid:
40 Ways to Out-Innovate the Competition.

This book contains 40 bite-sized tips and tricks for creating a culture of innovation.

Most are quite counterintuitive or irreverent.  For example:

• Asking for Ideas is a Bad Idea
• Don’t Think Outside the Box; Find a Better Box
• The Difference Between a Pipeline and a Sewer is What Flows Through It
• You Get What you Measure, But Will You Get What You Want?
• Hire People You Don’t Like

And 35 other unconventional ways to make your organizations a nimble, innovation machine.

I will share more, including the book cover, as soon it becomes available.

Stay tuned!

The manuscript went to the publisher, and so now I can return back to my blogging.  Moving forward, I will be blogging at least twice a week with those article being posted on the American Express OPEN Forum.  I will also try to add some unique content here on this site, including videos, interviews, and podcasts.  Let’s get started….

No this is not a work stoppage driven by protest.  It is a slowdown caused by an overload of work.

I am working on my next book and the manuscript is due over the next couple of weeks.  That is keeping me VERY busy.  So the activity here will slow down a little bit.

But I want to share some exciting news with blog readers:

• Personality Poker hit the Inc Magazine’s bestsellers list for the month of November
• Personality Poker was selected as one of the best business books for 2010 by 800CEOREAD
• On January 12th, an article of mine will run nationally in a major newspaper

And for those who are curious, the new book is a complete rewrite of my “Little Book of BIG Innovation Ideas.”  The new book will be twice the length (not so little), will be published by Penguin, and will have a new title.  Stay tuned for more details.