Two practices, one operator
CAIO runs two advisory practices. Each has its own buyer, engagement language, and entry path. The substrate is the same: fifteen years of hands-on enterprise transformation across Japan, US, Europe, and Asia.
PE & Deal Team Advisory
For PE operating partners and deal teams whose portfolio companies face a gap between IC-memo timeline assumptions and operational ground truth — most acutely in the first ninety days post-close, when the deal team's read of the asset and the operator's read of the work begin to diverge.
CAIO works inside the operating entity, not from the deal team's vantage. The frame is post-acquisition 90-day control-loop triage: three phases (triage, restoration, institutionalization), four control loops (timeline visibility, coalition commitment, cost discipline, ROI defensibility). Substrate from three independent operator instances of the post-acquisition pattern across US→JP, JP→EU, and sponsor-transition-in-country.
Engagement format
| Entry path | 15-minute fit call. Confidential. No deck. |
| Engagement language | English (and Japanese; Mandarin available where relevant). |
| Engagement scope | Bounded; fund-, portfolio-company-, or deal-stage-specific. |
| Pricing | Engagement-specific. Discussed after fit call. |
| Operator | Frank Wang directly. No team substitution. |
SMB AI Judgment Design Practice
This practice is grounded in Frank Wang's 15+ years of operator-inside enterprise DX implementation accountability.
Engagement language: Japanese. The buyer for this practice is an executive at a Japanese small or mid-cap company (中小〜中堅企業). All engagements, deliverables, and consultations are conducted in Japanese.
For executives evaluating AI adoption who have not yet established a decision axis — which themes to take on, in what order, against what criteria. The premise: most AI adoption failures in the SMB and mid-cap segment do not come from picking the wrong tool. They come from starting without a decision framework, then adjusting the framework around vendor proposals after the fact.
The product
Initial Theme Design Package (初回テーマ設計パック). A two-to-four-week bounded engagement that takes the company from "we should do something with AI" to "we have decided what to do, in what order, with what success criteria, and how to explain it internally."
Three board-ready deliverables, all in editable form:
- Current State Decision Map — where the company stands now: which AI themes are live, which are deferred, and the decision logic that got here
- Theme Selection Memo — the selected initial theme with full decision rationale: why this theme, in what order, against what criteria
- Execution Decision Framework — the 90-day execution frame: owners, sequence, decision gates, and the internal briefing structure for approval and budget
Out of scope (deliberately)
- Vendor selection or RFP support
- Implementation management
- Long-term advisory retainer
These exclusions preserve vendor-neutral judgment. The package's purpose is to make the company's first decision well; what comes after is the company's to run.
Engagement format
| Entry path | 30-minute consultation, free, in Japanese. |
| Engagement language | Japanese. |
| Duration | 2–4 weeks (adjusted to scope). |
| Pricing | 500,000–1,200,000 JPY (excl. tax). Scope-dependent. |
| Operator | Frank Wang directly. |
| Continuation | None assumed. Package completes; client decides what's next. |
For international counterparts referring a Japanese-speaking executive: email [email protected].
The SMB AI Judgment Design Practice described on this page is continuously refined through CAIO engagement experience. The first 1–3 paid engagements will reveal where the practice holds and where it requires refinement.
Method — judgment design across both practices
Both practices apply the same methodology: judgment design (判断設計). The premise is that most AI adoption failures, post-acquisition operating drift, and consulting-cycle waste come from the same root cause — a missing decision axis. Tools, vendors, plans, and even good people will not produce a working answer if the question framework is unclear.
Each engagement produces a Current State Decision Map (現状判断マップ) and an Execution Decision Framework (実行判断フレーム). The shapes adapt — PE engagements weighted toward control-loop restoration; SMB engagements weighted toward initial-theme selection — but the discipline is shared.
What CAIO does not do
- Technology-stack opinions divorced from operational context.
- Vendor recommendations that displace a client's own evaluation.
- Transformation roadmaps that assume implementation capacity that does not exist.
- Strategy decks without an attached implementation path.
Which practice fits
| Situation | Practice |
|---|---|
| PE operating partner. Acquired company is between thesis and execution. | PE & Deal Team Advisory. |
| Deal team. Pre-LOI or post-close screening of operational restoration scope. | PE & Deal Team Advisory. |
| Cross-border M&A advisor with a JP-cap or APAC-cap target. | PE & Deal Team Advisory (or refer your client). |
| Japanese mid-cap executive evaluating AI adoption. | SMB AI Judgment Design Practice (Japanese-language). |
| International counterpart of a JP-mid-cap executive who needs help. | Refer to SMB AI Judgment Design Practice (Japanese-language). |
| Vendor or technology firm wanting CAIO to recommend their tool. | Neither. CAIO is vendor-neutral. |
Take the next step
Inquiry: [email protected]