Strategy, investment, and execution advisory for ambitious projects, innovation programs, new ventures, market-entry strategies, and complex public-private initiatives.
Feel free to contact me with any questions or projects and connect with me on LinkedIn.
The problem
Big ideas usually fail long before they look like failures.
They fail when attention is mistaken for demand, when a compelling narrative replaces customer evidence, when scale arrives before proof, when consultants produce confidence instead of decisions, and when no one clearly owns the hard tradeoffs.
The issue is rarely lack of ambition. The issue is ambition without enough reality-testing.
I help leadership teams, investors, boards, and project teams ask the questions that should be answered before money, reputation, and years of effort are committed.
What I help clients do
I help clients:
- Test whether a major initiative is built on evidence or assumptions
- Identify hidden risks before they become budget, timeline, or reputation problems
- Clarify who owns decisions, outcomes, tradeoffs, and the right to say no
- Stress-test customer demand, pricing, business models, costs, and sequencing
- Build practical execution plans that can survive contact with markets, operations, regulation, and institutional reality
- Turn broad strategic ambition into decisions, priorities, and next steps
Core offers
Private Strategy Briefings
A focused session for CEOs, boards, investors, and leadership teams evaluating a major initiative, market entry, investment, innovation program, or transformation.
Typical format: 90 minutes
Best for: leadership alignment, early risk identification, board or investment committee preparation
Big Idea Reality Test Workshops
A half-day or full-day working session that applies a structured diagnostic to one live initiative.
Typical format: half-day or full-day
Best for: strategy teams, innovation teams, project teams, developers, investors, and public-sector entities
Big Idea Reality Test Workshops
A half-day or full-day working session that applies a structured diagnostic to one live initiative.
Typical format: half-day or full-day
Best for: strategy teams, innovation teams, project teams, developers, investors, and public-sector entities
Strategy Stress Test Sprints
A 2 to 4 week diagnostic that pressure-tests a major project, business case, investment opportunity, or transformation plan.
Typical format: 2 to 4 weeks
Best for: capital decisions, board approvals, major partnerships, market entry, and high-stakes initiatives
Executive Education and Leadership Programs
Custom sessions for universities, executive education programs, corporate academies, and leadership teams.
Typical format: guest lecture, masterclass, applied workshop, or multi-session module
Best for: MBA, executive MBA, public policy, innovation, infrastructure, project management, and leadership audiences
Why Michael
Michael Slage is a strategy, investment, and innovation executive with experience across large-scale development, venture capital, healthcare innovation, market entry, public-private initiatives, and complex international projects.
His work has included early roles connected to major space and technology initiatives, venture and innovation ecosystems in the United States and Europe, and senior roles across some of the most ambitious development platforms in the GCC.
He brings a practitioner’s perspective: how plans are made, how capital is justified, how assumptions become commitments, how organizations drift from strategy into theater, and how leaders can bring reality back into the room early enough to matter.
The Big Idea Reality Test
Before a major initiative scales, leaders should be able to answer seven questions:
- Who is this really for?
- What behavior proves they want it?
- Will they pay what the model requires?
- Does the smallest meaningful version work?
- What will it really cost to build and operate?
- What has to come first?
- What would cause us to stop, delay, redesign, or rethink?
If your team is evaluating a major project, investment, innovation program, market-entry strategy, or transformation, I can help you test the assumptions before the cost of being wrong becomes institutional.
Request a Private Strategy Briefing
