The serving thesis

The memo the course ends in. Not a mission statement and not a declaration of love for a country. An argued case, five pages, addressed to nobody and everybody, that a funder or a future collaborator could read cold: what the problem is and when it started, the evidence that it is structural rather than cultural, the three things the history says the industry needs, what a specific organisation does about one of them, the three strongest arguments against, and one measurable thing that would prove it is working inside two years.

It is previewed by name in Level 0 and stays undescribed until Level 4, on purpose. A thesis handed to a reader before the evidence is not a thesis, it is a slogan he has been asked to adopt.

Source: Course-coined for this build, and named in the course direction memo as the end state: understanding why the country needs help, why this person in particular wants to help, and why hope is warranted rather than naive. The memo format and its seven required sections come from the Level 4 capstone brief.

First used in: 0.3 · The whole board, before we walk it