1. Bridging Business and Design 360.910.1530 www.satopartners.com
Better Results – by Design
Bridging Business and Design
Have More Impact Through Design
Doing Design and Innovation
o Design Strategy What projects should we be doing to capitalize on using design more strategically now, and in the future?
o Organization Processes How could we do design research, design, management or operations even better?
o Management and Design Tools What systems, then how best to formalize them to be more efficient and effective?
o Design Resources How to best share intellectual capital unique to design and innovation?
o Transform While Delivering Results How could we routinely establish a new way of working while deliver results?
o Capture and Scale Up Best Practices How to best quickly spread our successful new ways of working?
o Custom Participatory Design Work Sessions How could we better at collaboratively designing and aligning on
solutions with customers and stakeholders?
Managing Design and Innovation
o Organization Strategies What are our priorities to maximize our impact? Are we well aligned with other groups?
o Balanced Project Portfolio What is the right mix in our projects for maximum impact, now and next year?
o Nimble Plans How best to develop plans that are nimble yet stay the course to successfully achieve our objectives?
o Metrics that Matter How effective and efficient are we? Are we aligned to key strategies and with stakeholders?
o Salient Business Cases How to best demonstrate our contributions to others - reasons to invest even more in us?
Growing Design and Innovation
o Organization Readiness How ready is your organization for design to be used as a key strategy?
o Tailored Assessments What are the strengths or weaknesses of our organization, team or staff?
o Organization Vision What do we want our team to be doing in the future? We aligned with other groups?
o Organization Architectures How best to be organized to achieve our vision and strategy?
o Organization Roadmaps What is best to grow now? Later? When?
o Pilot and Bootstrap New Capability How best to scale up new ways to work, without widespread disruption?
o Job Architectures What expertise is needed and how does it relate to other experts?
o Job Descriptions What is each expert responsible for? How do they work with others?
o Design Leadership Teams How best to form and run a leadership team to have more impact?
o Custom Training How can we train our staff to fill a skill gap critical for our growth? Especially elusive “soft” skills?
o Custom Speaker Seminars How could we build awareness about the value of design and innovation beyond the team?
A Fresh Approach to Vexing Business Challenges: Apply Design Thinking
o Fresh View of Same Old Challenges How can we approach the same challenge and succeed this time?
o Act on Wicked Problems How could we take a fresh approach to a vexing challenge - with better results?
o Identify New, and Grow Nascent Opportunities How could we refine concepts with lower risk than before?
o Integrate Design Thinking into Your Practices How to make Design Thinking routine while delivering results?
o Custom Work Sessions How to best we engage left AND right brain thinking, accounting for emotional and rationale
factors in our idea generation, problem-solving and decision-making meetings?
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Best Practices
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Design Thinking

2. Bridging Business and Design 360.910.1530 www.satopartners.com
Steve Sato, Principal
Steve is the founder of Sato+Partners, a management consulting and organization development firm
tailored for design and innovation. His team includes experience consultants from disciplines such as
R&D, marketing, finance, organization change/design and leadership; all have prior corporate experience
and have worked with design organizations.
We Understand Design and Innovation, including in Large Organizations
Unlike general consulting firms, each Sato+Partners team member has experience working with design
and innovation groups and have worked in corporations. Furthermore, we use a Design Thinking approach
in our work; an approach Design leaders are familiar with, but may not have applied to growing and
managing their teams. Past clients include Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Yahoo, HP, The Hershey Company,
Group Health, NetApp and the Industrial Design Society of America.
Transform How Your Team Works while Delivering Results
Sato+Partners works with executives, directors and their teams to collaboratively build design and
innovation capability though using real project work and Design Thinking - so clients produce business
results while building new capability. We use targeted interactive work sessions to leverage your
organization knowledge to gain fresh insights and co-create relevant, viable solutions; hence you do not
need to be brief us exhaustively about your company.
Proven Approach, Deep Domain Experience
Our approach to management and organization design was derived and refined while Steve was a Senior
Manager of Strategy and Operations in Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) Corporate Design group. He led a team
responsible for building experience design capability across the company. Steve was originally recruited
into HP to lead an internal consulting team that worked with internal clients to develop customer-centered
strategies, plans and innovation programs. Prior to HP, Steve managed and performed customer-centered
research and projects for clients; while an Associate Director at Monitor/Doblin Group and as a researcher
in Accenture’s advanced research center, CSTaR.
Business, Design and Engineering Background
Steve has a Masters in Design from the Institute of Design at IIT, Masters of Engineering Management
from Northwestern University and a Bachelor's of Science in Mechanical Engineering, from the University
of Illinois. He has published and presented on customer-centered design and using Design Thinking for
Organization Change and Design. Steve also has taught graduate classes at the Institute of Design.