Yesterday, Stephen Shapiro was in town for our private LeaveSmarter event, sponsored by BMO Harris/M&I Bank and Whyte Hirschboek Dudek. His talked focused on ideas from his recent book, and 800-CEO-READ Business Book Award winner for 2011, Best Practices Are Stupid: 40 Ways to Out-Innovate the Competition.

According to Shapiro, the main problems we have with being innovative, is how we think about things, the kind of questions we ask, and what we already know about the challenges we face. Here’s a clip from his talk that gives examples of this:

Following this, Shapiro states that asking the right questions, looking at similar problems but that occurred in different situations from our own, and thinking calmly about those situations, can have a markedly successful effect. From Einstein to everyday people, his book offers great examples of how people have found solutions that were truly great, and how we can do the very same thing.