Strategy & Innovation Design
Everyone’s doing the hard work. No one can tell you if it’s the right work.
Everyone’s doing the hard work.
No one can tell you if it’s the right work.
Your strategic plan isn't the answer. Your strategy is. It settles where you're going, what's in the way, and what you'll do about it.We get you there.
Your strategic plan isn’t the answer. Your strategy is.It settles where you’re going, what’s in the way, and what you’ll do about it.We get you there.
How we do it
How we get you there.
You need your team doing the right work and able to move without you in every room.Getting there comes down to three questions.
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1/ Where are you going?
Where are you going?
The future you’re trying to create, specific enough that someone could disagree with it out loud.
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2/ What’s stopping you?
What’s stopping you?
There’s never just one. The one thing you choose to attack decides the strategy you need. It’s rarely the one everybody agrees on.
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3/ What will you do about it?
What will you do about it?
One decision the rest answer to: which bets you make, what you stop, and what happens first. The stopping is where the real argument starts.
Every person at the table has something riding on the answer, and a cost for being the one who pushes. We run the room and work with you—inside the problem and outside the org chart.That’s what lets us push on the answers you walked in with and keep the hardest choices from being negotiated away.
Signal · Two-Day Intensive
Start with Signal.
Your leadership team. Two days. One strategy.
Strategy doesn’t come from certainty. It takes creativity to see a different path forward, the courage to choose it, and the conviction to act while reality tests it.Signal is our two-day intensive for the strategy your team keeps circling, so you can get moving on the right one.
Decide.
Settle where you're going, which barrier you'll attack, and the one rule every other decision answers to. This is where the real argument happens.
Align.
Shared conviction, not consensus. Your leaders can explain the choice, defend it, and use it long after they leave the room.
Move.
A sequenced roadmap and scoreboard that put the strategy to work—and tell your team when to stay the course or adapt.
You leave with more than agreement in the room. You leave with a strategy your team built and tested—and can use with confidence when the next decision arrives.
Signal is where most engagements begin.When your strategy is clear but you aren’t built to run it yet, Signature builds what comes next.When the hard calls keep coming and you need to think them through before they reach your team, Spar gives you a standing partner outside your org chart.
Featured Work · Diversus Health
What started in the room didn’t stay there.
“Before our partnership with Aven, our brand felt fragmented and reactive…This partnership gave us not only a stronger brand, but also a strategic brand and marketing foundation that will guide our decisions moving forward.”
Katie Blickenderfer
Chief Clinical Officer, Diversus Health
When we started.
A 150-year-old organization with no brand strategy and no single executive accountable for how it showed up. Across the system, different teams were answering that question for themselves.
A year and a half later.
A brand strategy framework being used by teams across the organization. Marketing and community strategies, each with a field guide to put it to work. A new Chief Experience Officer role, created and filled. An FY27 plan with fewer, better-defined projects.
Why Aven
The decisions that matter most don’t stay in one lane. Neither do we.
The decisions that matter most don’t stay in one lane.Neither do we.
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We’re small and independent on purpose, so our team is shaped by your problem, not our org chart.
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We have no practice area to protect, so we ask the hard questions, not the ones that keep us hired.
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We don’t hand you a deck and leave when your strategy is created—we stay with you to design what comes next.
Book 20 Minutes
Twenty minutes with Shun-Luoi.
I’m Shun-Luoi Fong, Founder and Principal of Aven. Tell me where you’re trying to go and what’s in the way. I’ll tell you straight whether we can help.
Have additional questions? Email us at [email protected].
Book 20 Minutes
Twenty minutes with Shun-Luoi.
I’m Shun-Luoi Fong, Founder and Principal of Aven.Tell me where you’re trying to go and what’s in the way. I’ll tell you straight whether we can help.
Have additional questions? Email us at [email protected].
Book 20 Minutes
Twenty minutes with Shun-Luoi.
I’m Shun-Luoi Fong, Founder and Principal of Aven.Tell me where you’re trying to go and what’s in the way. I’ll tell you straight whether we can help.
Have additional questions? Email us at [email protected].
Signal
Your team’s been circling the same questions for months. Let’s settle them.
Signal is a two-day intensive for your leadership team. We run the room, push on the answers you walked in with, and stay until you’ve settled where you’re going and what you’ll do next.
When we speak with executives, we often hear…
"We know where we want to go, but something’s in the way. We’ve been wrestling with it for a while now, and my team just can’t agree on what it is."
"We’ve been having the same meeting for months, and everything’s still priority one. Ask five people on my team where we’re going and I’ll get five answers."
Two different rooms. The same need: a strategy the team can articulate, defend, and use.
Signal gets you there.
How Signal Works
A structured process.
A flexible approach.
Every Signal moves through the same three phases. What we do inside them is designed around your team and the decision in front of it.
Decide.
Where you’re going, what’s actually stopping you, and what you’ll do about it.
Where you’re going. The one aspiration that’s distinctly yours, specific enough that someone could disagree with it out loud.
What’s stopping you. There’s never just one thing. The one you attack first decides the strategy you need.
The one decision, your strategy. The rule every other decision answers to, including what you’re betting on, what you’re stopping, and what happens first.
Align.
Shared conviction, not consensus.
The people who will defend the decision are the people who made it.
What you’re stopping gets said out loud by the person who owns it.
Move.
A roadmap and scoreboard that put the strategy to work.
What happens first, what follows, and who owns it.
The specific signals that tell you when to stay the course and when to adapt.
You leave with more than agreement in the room. You leave with a strategy your team built and tested—and can use with confidence when the next decision arrives.
Why Signal?
Where you are. Where you’ll go.
Before Signal.
Ask five people where you’re going, you get five answers.
Everything is priority one.
The disagreements happen after the meeting, in twos and threes—and endless email threads.
Every decision routes back to you.
After Signal.
You ask five people, you get the same answer, without checking their notes.
You can name what starts, what stops, and when.
The disagreement happened in the room, with the decision-makers there.
Your team uses the strategy to make the next call.
The Team
Who’s in the room.
The person who can make the final call.
Chief executive, both days. A room without this person produces a recommendation, not a decision.
The leadership team.
Whoever owns the parts of the business this touches. Usually five to seven people.
Anyone who can unmake it later.
If they’re not in the room, they’ll relitigate it in the hallway.
Aven.
We run the room and work with you—inside the problem and outside the org chart.
The Investment
Starts at $18,000.
We only run a Signal when there’s at least $250,000 riding on the decision.We make that call with you on the phone. If Signal is not the right engagement, we’ll tell you before anyone signs anything.
Includes
Before Signal
Kickoff, interviews, groundwork, materials review, and desktop research.
Signal
Two days in person with your leadership team, evenings included if that’s what it takes.
After Signal
The documented strategy, roadmap, and scoreboard, plus a debrief on what happens next.
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Before Signal
Kickoff, interviews, groundwork, materials review, and desktop research.
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Signal
Two days in person with your leadership team, evenings included if that’s what it takes.
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After Signal
The documented strategy, roadmap, and scoreboard, plus a debrief on what happens next.
Book 20 Minutes
Twenty minutes with Shun-Luoi on Signal.
I’m Shun-Luoi Fong, Founder and Principal of Aven. Tell me where you’re trying to go and what’s in the way. I’ll tell you straight whether Signal can help.
Have additional questions? Email us at [email protected].
Book 20 Minutes
Twenty minutes with Shun-Luoi on Signal.
I’m Shun-Luoi Fong, Founder and Principal of Aven.Tell me where you’re trying to go and what’s in the way. I’ll tell you straight whether Signal can help.
Have additional questions? Email us at [email protected].
Spar
Hard calls keep coming.
Some you can’t take to your team yet.
Spar gives you an outside senior partner to think them through with, so the decision you bring to your team has already been tested.
Two conversations we keep having with executives...
“I often think out loud with my leadership team, but the moment I do, they start treating it like direction. I need a place to think that doesn’t have to turn into a directive.”
“Something feels off. We’re off the plan and maybe off target. I’m not sure whether we’re adapting, or just drifting and calling it adapting.”
The longer you lead, the fewer places you can be uncertain.
Spar gives you that place.
How Spar Works
Bring us what’s live.
Every Spar conversation starts with what’s live. How we work through it depends on the decision in front of you.
Bring it before it’s ready.
Think out loud without setting your team in motion. The half-formed idea, the question you haven’t answered, and the decision you’re not ready to announce.
Test it against the bet.
We work new opportunities and changing conditions against the strategy you already chose, without treating it as either fixed or optional.
Defend the reasoning.
The problem isn’t unanswered questions. It’s unquestioned answers. Here you have to make the case out loud, to someone who doesn’t have to agree.
The value is sharper thinking while the decision is still live.There’s no request queue and no monthly deck. Each conversation gives us more context for the next. When the work turns to building, that’s Signature.
The Investment
$6,000 a month.
About two days of the same senior partner’s time, reserved for you and used across the month, an hour or an afternoon at a time. Month to month, with thirty days’ notice either way.We take on four Spar relationships at a time. When we’re full we’ll say so, and will let you know when a seat opens.
Includes
A standing weekly session of sixty to ninety minutes.
Access between sessions, with a response within one business day. That includes review of plans, documents, and decks.
One focused half-day each month to work a single live problem.
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A standing weekly session of sixty to ninety minutes.
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Access between sessions, with a response within one business day. That includes review of plans, documents, and decks.
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One focused half-day each month to work a single live problem.
Book 20 Minutes
Twenty minutes with Shun-Luoi on Spar.
I’m Shun-Luoi Fong, Founder and Principal of Aven. Tell me what keeps landing on your desk that you’d rather not decide alone. You’ll get my honest read and a straight answer on whether Spar fits.
Have additional questions? Email us at [email protected].
Book 20 Minutes
Twenty minutes with Shun-Luoi on Spar.
I’m Shun-Luoi Fong, Founder and Principal of Aven.Tell me what keeps landing on your desk that you’d rather not decide alone. You’ll get my honest read and a straight answer on whether Spar fits.
Have additional questions? Email us at [email protected].
Signature
Your strategy is clear.
You aren’t built to run it yet.
Signal gets your team to a strategy it can articulate, defend, and use. Signature is how we stay to build with you—extending the strategy or carrying it into the business.
Why Signature?
A clear strategy usually creates two kinds of work.
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1/ Build out the strategy framework.
Build out the strategy framework.
The governing strategy is clear. The connected choices it creates across the business aren’t: where each part will play, how it will win there, and the systems and capabilities it needs. We build that framework with your team.
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2/ Carry it into the business.
Carry it into the business.
The strategy points to what has to be started, stopped, redesigned, or staffed. We take that work on with the people who will own it after us.
This is where Signature begins.
How Signature Works
The work defines the engagement.
Each Signature is built around your strategy and the challenge it brings into view. Together, we determine what needs to be built, who needs to be involved, and what will change when we’re done. The result is a defined body of work, a fixed fee, and a finish date.
Work a strategy might call for.
A strategy framework, and the field guide designed to keep it in use.
A brand system, from ethos to expression to ecosystem.
A product, service, or experience redesigned around what people actually need.
A business function rebuilt from the structure up, including the roles and the people hired into it.
A new executive role, defined and filled.
What does your strategy call for next?
Signal gets you to your strategy. Signature builds what comes next. Spar keeps an outside partner in your corner for the decisions that keep coming.
Book 20 Minutes
Twenty minutes with Shun-Luoi on Signature.
I’m Shun-Luoi Fong, Founder and Principal of Aven. Tell me your strategy and the work it now calls for. If the strategy itself isn’t clear yet, we’ll start there.
Have additional questions? Email us at [email protected].
Book 20 Minutes
Twenty minutes with Shun-Luoi on Signature.
I’m Shun-Luoi Fong, Founder and Principal of Aven.Tell me your strategy and the work it now calls for. If the strategy itself isn’t clear yet, we’ll start there.
Have additional questions? Email us at [email protected].
Our Work
More Case Studies Coming Soon.
Read our Diversus Health case study to learn more about our work.
Featured Work · Diversus Health
They hired us to build a brand strategy. They kept us for the decisions that followed.
Our work with Diversus Health grew from an accelerated brand strategy process into a fractional executive role—and helped them create a permanent one.
The Challenge
Everyone was answering the same question separately.
Diversus Health has served the Colorado Springs region for 150 years. Clinics, crisis care, community programs, and a name many people across the region recognize.What it didn’t have was a settled answer to what its brand stood for. Nothing written down to point to, and no one executive who owned the question. So the answer got made locally. Every team that needed one made its own, and each one was reasonable on its own terms.
The Journey
It started with two days and a lot of hard questions.
The first engagement was designed to end that summer: groundwork and immersion, a two-day Brand Ethos Lightning Round with the executives, then a working session to settle what the room hadn’t. It produced the brand strategy and framework.Then Diversus came back with a different question. How do we run it?
The Chief Clinical Officer, who was covering marketing on top of running clinical care, expanded our engagement into a fractional Chief Brand Officer role. Each answer revealed the next decision the organization needed to make, and Diversus extended the engagement more than once, to an additional year.Marketing got its own two-day workshop and strategy framework, built for the executive who would eventually own it. Community engagement got one too, including a new way to map Diversus’ community relationships and a tool for deciding which community initiatives to pursue—and which to turn down. Both received field guides that turn the strategies into week-to-week practice.
We joined the weekly executive and leadership meetings and presented the brand strategy to the Board and to leadership groups. We redesigned the marketing team’s structure, defined the roles, wrote the job descriptions, and led the hiring.When the CEO decided experience needed a permanent owner on the executive team, we created and defined the role with him. And we worked the next fiscal year’s plan with executives, helping them hold a long list of legitimate priorities together and ultimately choose fewer of them to align with a more focused strategy.
By the end of the engagement, the people accountable for this work had changed more than once. The strategy hadn’t.
By the end of the engagement, the people accountable for this work had changed more than once.The strategy hadn’t.
“Working with Aven was a valuable investment. Having a dedicated thought partner pushed our team to think more boldly and more intentionally about our brand’s future. Shun-Luoi’s expertise helped us connect the dots between brand, culture, and business goals. He challenged assumptions, asked the right questions, and co-created solutions to help elevate our thinking.”
Katie Blickenderfer
Chief Clinical Officer, Diversus Health
The Impact
What’s in place now.
A permanent executive seat. The Chief Experience Officer role was created with the CEO and filled, giving experience a standing place on the executive team.
A brand strategy in use. Presented to the Board, the officer team, and leadership groups down to the director level, and applied by teams in their own work.
Strategies that ship with instructions. Marketing and community each have a strategy framework and a field guide for putting it into practice.
A rebuilt marketing team. The marketing function has a structure that fits the work and the people hired to do it.
A smaller plan. FY27 carries fewer projects than the year before, each one better defined.
“The support Shun-Luoi provided over the past one+ years came at a critical time for us and helped build a solid foundation for our brand and marketing efforts to thrive in the future. Extremely grateful for the work and am a huge fan of his approach and style.”
Brian Turner
Chief Operations Officer, Diversus Health
“The support Shun-Luoi provided over the past one+ years came at a critical time for us and helped build a solid foundation for our brand and marketing efforts to thrive in the future. Extremely grateful for the work and am a huge fan of his approach and style.”
Brian Turner
Chief Operations Officer, Diversus Health
What's Next
Your journey starts the same way.
Two days, and the people who can actually choose the strategy. That's Signal.
Two days, and the people who can actually choose the strategy.That's Signal.
About Us
Alone, Impossible.
Together, Inevitable.
Your team has the context and the authority to decide, but no one at the table with nothing riding on the answer. We’re the strategy and innovation design firm that gets in the room, asks the questions no one on the inside can, and stays until the answer holds.
Our Story
Why we built Aven.
The work we were brought in to do often started before the organization had settled the strategy underneath it.
We kept seeing the same pattern: the assignment was rarely called strategy. But sooner or later it required one decision the rest of the work needed to answer to. The organization hadn’t made it.From outside, the handoff can look like the finish. Inside the organization, it’s where ownership gets tested. A strategy people didn’t help build stays someone else’s answer. And a strategy built without the people it’s meant to serve is built on assumptions.We can’t make that decision for you, and shouldn’t. So we built Aven the other way around.We work inside the problem with the people who own it, and with the people the work is meant to serve.That’s human-centered strategy and innovation design.
Our Team
Who you work with.
Shun-Luoi Fong, Founder.
Shun-Luoi leads every Aven engagement. Across a twenty-five-year career, he’s built and led agency teams, launched ventures, and served inside an executive team as a fractional Chief Brand Officer. He also teaches innovation and entrepreneurship at CU Boulder, and regularly advises startups.In life and work, he’s guided by his mantra: listen, learn, love, create. He lives in the Colorado foothills with his wife and four full-of-life children, and spends as much time as he can traveling, exploring the outdoors, and playing games with his family. All of it comes back to the same thing: gathering people around shared experiences.
The Collective.
When an engagement needs more than one person, we draw on a collective built over twenty-five years and bring in the right people for the right work, every time. The team changes shape to fit the problem in front of it.
How we Work
Our beliefs have consequences.
Strategy and innovation are human-centered.
The work is shaped by the people it will serve, and is built with the people who’ll carry it. That doesn’t mean consensus. It means the people affected are more than abstractions in a plan.
Distinctive beats different beats better.
Better means competing on someone else’s terms. Different means leaving that track. Distinctive means making a choice rooted deeply enough in who you are and who you serve that comparison stops being useful. That’s the bar we hold the work to.
If nothing loses, nothing was decided.
Strategy and innovation require real choices, including what starts and what stops. We’re not here to tell you what you want to hear. We keep the disagreement in the room and push your team to defend the choice it makes.
The best work is alive, not archived.
The world doesn’t hold still because the strategy is written down. So we build yours as a working hypothesis, along with what your team will watch for, because execution will teach you something the room couldn’t know.
Who we work with
We do our best work when...
A consequential challenge is live, and it’s been live longer than you’d like.
You want your thinking tested rather than confirmed, and you’re prepared to make choices that cost something.
You want the people the work serves to shape it, and the people who’ll run it to help build it.
The decision crosses functions, and the person who can make the final call will be part of the work.
Where We've Worked.
Behavioral health and wellness. Nonprofit and social impact. Outdoor and tourism. Financial services. Technology and startups.
Book 20 Minutes
Twenty minutes with Shun-Luoi.
I’m Shun-Luoi Fong, Founder and Principal of Aven. Tell me where you’re trying to go and what’s in the way. You’ll get my honest read and a straight answer on how we can help.
Have additional questions? Email us at [email protected].
Book 20 Minutes
Twenty minutes with Shun-Luoi.
I’m Shun-Luoi Fong, Founder and Principal of Aven.Tell me where you’re trying to go and what’s in the way. You’ll get my honest read and a straight answer on how we can help.
Have additional questions? Email us at [email protected].
Contact us
Alone, Impossible.
Together, Inevitable.
Let’s connect.
Prefer email? Reach out to us at [email protected].
Thank you!
Thanks for reaching out. We’ll be in touch shortly.If you’d prefer a quick conversation, book 20 minutes. We’d love to connect.
Our Offerings.
Your leadership team.
Two days. One strategy.
Signal gets you to your strategy.
Signature builds what comes next.
Your outside sparring partner.
For the decisions that keep coming.