Big Sky Blue

We make the other people in the room smarter

 

We use design thinking & learning science

to help organizations discover where they need to go next

& build the capabilities to get there.

 

experience design

The way things are is no more than the way they were made: the last best solution to challenges we still get to solve better. Whether designing for customers, staff or students, we help our clients get just-right every detail of the world they’re building.

brand strategy

We partner with leaders looking to step back from the spin and teams hoping to get unstuck; new ventures figuring out who they want to be and mature organizations figuring out who they want to be next. No matter what our clients’ stage or size, we help them find that place where Why should the world care? meets Why do you?

learning engineering

In a constantly changing landscape, learning is the surest superpower. From feedback workshops to communities of practice, we build your people’s capacity for ongoing reinvention: the skills to discover together what they don’t yet know—and the courage it takes to admit it.


Dan has a knack for finding people and organizations right at the moment when he can make a big impact. He helped our team work through our assumptions about what our company’s core business is, what it’s next stage of growth could be, and how to develop our people to thrive in that future.

Dan’s superpower is sparking those moments of clarity that help a team reframe its brand or value proposition—and then navigating the complex conversations that get the rest of the organization on board. He’s a gifted facilitator who knows how to work with many executive styles, and an asset to any company looking to sort its strategy!
— Tom Keefe, Principal, Oxeon Partners
Dan has become our go-to expert for making our complex ideas, clear. Whether we’re overhauling a Demo Day pitch or refining an investor deck, Dan shifts our focus from individual trees to the entire forest. And as our story gets more compelling and concise, we’re driving deeper, more meaningful conversations with customers—and investors.
— Shawn Harris, Co-founder & CEO of Coworked
Each time we work with Dan, we do some of our best work. Last year, he took our leadership team through a six-month strategic planning process, and we ended up with a clear picture of what we do best, a feel for the strengths we use to do it, and a series of experiments for trying out how we could stretch those strengths into new strategic opportunities

Dan’s one of the most gifted listeners I have ever met—and a natural teacher. He doesn’t just deliver recommendations, he works alongside us, so that after it’s over we’re still saying “How would Dan look at this?” or “How would he say what we’re seeing?”
— Barbra Rabson, President and CEO, Massachusetts Health Quality Partners
Dan’s our compass. He keeps us clear on the core value we’re offering—what our clients really want and what we really care about. He keeps us focused on the problem we solve better than anybody else out there, and plugged in to our reasons for doing what we do…so when we put ourselves out there—through the service we offer, or how we talk to prospects—we’re saying something true and authentic.
— George Boyar, fmr Chief of Staff, Mentor Collective
Dan really is a coach: for 5 months he partnered with our team on a human-centered design project—interviewing users, understanding their needs and values, turning these insights into a sharp-edged set of design principles that we can build toward. But we also got an unexpected bonus: a deep infusion of organizational capacity. The project is over, but we’re still feeling the impact: we’ve got a disciplined, simple process for ongoing user research; a way to learn from our customers what makes them happy and what makes them hurt; and the tools to course-correct as we go. I couldn’t recommend Dan more highly.
— Dave Meyers, CEO & Co-Founder, TeachersConnect
We’re a literary organization full of great writers, but we’ve struggled for years to get our brand right. It felt impossible to find a single message that captured all the different parts of who we are, why we matter, and why our stakeholders should care. Along came Dan! Dan led us through a thoughtful, rigorous process that took us deep. He asked tough questions and pushed back when we weren’t being clear or going far enough. He helped us peel back the layers to get to what we really mean. The whole team is thrilled with our new branding: it’s honest, authentic, and aspirational.
— Eve Bridburg, Executive Director, GrubStreet
Dan has an uncanny ability to ask the right question. When he’s coaching me or the teams I lead, Dan helps us see the situation we’re in more clearly, identify the obstacles that are getting in our way, and recognize the opportunities we could take advantage of. I leave our conversations feeling like I’m focused on the goals that can make the greatest impact, right now. Because he understands how teaching and learning really work, Dan doesn’t give advice: he helps us discover what we really want to do, and figure out the best way to get it done. And he’s so happy when we do!
— Emilee Harris, fmr. Director of Middle School Math, KIPP NYC
 
Dan is our secret weapon for storytelling—a spellcaster who helps CEOs boil down their stories from maple sap into sweet maple sugar. Techstars has dozens of talented mentors, but none are better than Dan at helping CEOs craft a narrative that gets straight to the heart of what makes their company unique—that captures the impact only they can make on the world. And the proof isn’t just in what the CEOs say about Dan; every team he worked with increased their customer-base and were oversubscribed in subsequent funding rounds.
— Ty Danco, fmr. Director, Techstars Boston
Dan led our team through a re-branding process that helped us see why our customers should care about what we have to offer—and reminded us why we do. As we built new brand guidelines, Dan made sure we communicate our value proposition in a way that’s compelling to our customers and meaningful to us.

Working with Dan has helped us think about ourselves and our company in a way that until now we have never been able to.
— Nikolay Piriankov, CEO, Taylor & Hart
Dan’s human-centered approach to problem-solving has been crucial in helping us work through important challenges we’ve faced as a startup, like better articulating the value proposition of our product, improving our client on-boarding experience, and finding better ways to support and communicate with each other as a team. The inquiry process he takes us through helps us reframe our challenges—and generate new and original solutions to seemingly intractable problems.
— Cristina Herndon, fmr. Director of Partner Relations, Mainstay
Dan makes you feel like you and your situation are the only things that matter right now. He listens deeply, captures what you really mean, and offers back a few small insights or connections that open up a completely different understanding—a path forward you can actually follow, because it comes out of what you really believe. In my 30+ years in education, there is no one that I’ve met that has this ability to truly help you be better.
— Michael Caraco, Dean of Faculty, Burr and Burton Academy


Designing the future of learning spaces with architects and educators at Harvard’s Learning Environments for Tomorrow.

Rebranding with Taylor & Hart.

Problem-solving with Keystone Strategy.