Shane Snow

“The next Gladwell.” That's what fans and critics from Forbes to The L.A. Times are calling innovation expert and keynote speaker Shane Snow, the bestselling author of SMARTCUTS: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success. An award-winning entrepreneur and journalist, Snow has been declared a “Wunderkind" by The New York Times, a “Digital Maverick” by Details Magazine, and his work “Insanely addicting” by GQ.

Snow is the Chief Creative Officer of Contently, a technology company he co-founded in 2010 with the mission of creating a better media world. Contently has helped more than 50,000 freelance journalists build better careers, and provides publishing tools and creative talent for Fortune 500 companies from American Express to GE to Coca-Cola. Snow’s writing has appeared in Wired Magazine, The New Yorker, Fast Company, The Washington Post, Time and many more. He’s been named one of Forbes and Inc.’s "30 Under 30," BusinessInsider’s "Coolest People In Tech," Folio’s "15 Under 30 Magazine Innovators," a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and a recipient of Columbia University’s 2014 Innovator Award “for furthering the cause of journalism."

In his inspiring keynote presentations, Snow shatters common wisdom about success, distillling patterns from years of studying rapidly successful companies and people in a dynamic style that’s been described as “Good to Great meets MacGyver.” Through gripping stories and thought-provoking research, he offers fresh insight related to personal development, organizational growth, innovation, change management and resilience. Takeaways include why some groups are able to achieve incredible things in implausibly short amounts of time while others fall by the wayside, how to beat roadblocks and plateaus in business and life, and how to approach creative problem solving through what psychologists call "lateral thinking."

The BBC says that Snow’s ideas, "could change your life," and Maxim Magazine adds, "Snow is not telling you how to succeed; he's daring you to do it."