Daniel (Danny) Szpiro

Creating a Culture of Innovation

It seems that everyone is talking about innovation as a pathway to business success these days. But innovation isn’t a process that can simply be switched on like a light bulb. Organizations truly committed to being innovative must consider how to create a culture where innovation is encouraged, fostered, supported, and rewarded. The challenges in creating such a culture may be significant for many established organizations where the tolerance for risk is low, where there’s a “not invented here” attitude, and where people are afraid about being punished when something doesn’t go according to plans. Any organization truly committed to creating an environment that produces innovation has to systematically reconsider what has to be changed in order to achieve that goal.

Daniel (Danny) Szpiro

Danny Szpiro is an award-winning teacher and expert on financial management, including the areas of management accounting, capital budgeting, post-investment review, and the Balanced Scorecard. He has published on the topic of integrating capital budgeting and corporate strategy, and he has published teaching material on the use of the case method that has been adopted by universities around the world.

Dr. Szpiro has led sessions and courses with executives in many development and graduate degree programs, including Executive MBA, Executive CMA and Aviation MBA specializations, in North America and overseas. He earned a BSc from the University of Waterloo, an MBA from Queen’s University, an MSc (International Accounting & Finance) from the London School of Economics, and a PhD from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario. In his research and consulting, he has worked with organizations on the use of post-investment reviews and strategic controls in capital investment systems.

Dr. Szpiro is Director of Executive MBA Program at IEDC-Bled School of Management and former Dean and academic leader of the Jack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University. Dr. Szpiro was a faculty member and administrator at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. He joined Johnson as the founding Director of The Cornell-Queen’s Executive MBA Program and ultimately advanced to the position of Associate Dean for Executive Education. From 1999 to 2004 he was an Associate Professor with Queen’s School of Business at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, and, for most of that period, the Director of Queen’s National Executive MBA program. Prior to joining Queen’s, he was a faculty member with the John Molson School of Business at Concordia University. Before pursuing an academic career, he spent many years in various international activities in the consumer electronics industry.

Credits: CMA Teacher of the Year from l’Ordre des CMA du Québec; published in Managerial Finance Journal; contributing author Society of Management Accountants CMA Entrance Study Guide.