Technology, Innovation, and Great Power Competition

Final presentation and policy memo

The final presentation and policy memo (including an implementation plan) is the summation of your learning experience in this course, providing an opportunity to apply the concepts, tools, and strategies you’ve learned to a real-world national security problem.

Final presentation

The final presentation will be up to 15 minutes in length... You will present your team’s journey and your project’s key findings, including a synthesis of interviews, policy analysis, and AI-generated insights. This presentation should clearly communicate your proposed solutions and demonstrate how your work addresses the problem statement. You cannot possibly cover everything you learned in 10 weeks in a 10-minute presentation. The final presentation is partly an exercise in distilling the most critical, surprising, and impactful things you learned in the process. Do not fall into the trap of making your final presentation too high-level or abstract. We need to see WHY your understanding and approach to the problem statement evolved the way it did. Include anecdotes about specific interviews that support the “what we learned story” you are telling.

[The assignment describes the slides to be used, including:]

Slide 4: Policy document discovery summary

• Tell us about your AI synthesis of policy documents across the quarter
  • Here’s how the policy content changed our view of the problem and hypotheses to test

Slide 5: Summarize what you learned about using AI tools

• Showcase creative approaches to using AI tools to address your problem with speed and urgency
• Highlight instances where AI tools could have misled you

Policy memo (including an implementation plan)

The policy memo will be up to 2500 words... This memo is intentionally short in length with the purpose of it being read more widely by the sponsor and others. The memo should demonstrate a thorough understanding of the problem and potential solutions. You are expected to utilize AI tools to enhance the clarity, precision, and impact of your memo. Like a product, you should test your memo with relevant stakeholders before final delivery. The style and format of the policy memo is of your own choosing based on the problem sponsor and audience.

The memo will include a 1-page addendum focused on how you plan to implement the recommendations from your policy memo. Since the goal of this course is to make a real-world policy impact, the addendum should clearly outline your strategy for persuading key stakeholders (e.g., U.S. Congress, government agencies, or relevant departments) to consider and adopt your recommendations. This should include identifying the most relevant audiences, detailing your communication strategy, and specifying the tactics you will use to ensure your recommendations are seriously considered. Importantly, this is not an implementation plan for your sponsor, but a plan for how you will effectively advocate for and persuade decision-makers to act on your recommendations. This implementation plan will only be seen by the teaching team.

Identify key insights succinctly

Your final presentation and policy memo should emphasize key insights about addressing your problem statement. We anticipate that you will need to exercise a high level of discipline to condense your presentation and memo within these limits. The purpose is to present striking insights into the problem statement and hypotheses for solutions. If you cannot communicate the core insights in a few short statements, the content is not yet clear enough to deliver real impact.

AI tools in your final deliverables

You are expected to use AI tools to assist you with the policy memo and presentation. You will be evaluated not only on your writing, but also on the novelty of your insight, the richness of your primary data, and your ability to make real-world policy impact. However, your policy memo should not discuss your methodologies and should instead emphasize your key insights, why they matter, and your policy recommendations.

Evaluation Criteria

• Novelty and Feasibility of Solutions: The originality and practicality of your proposed solutions.
• Depth of Research: The thoroughness of your primary data collection, including the quality and relevance of stakeholder interviews.
• AI Integration: The effectiveness of AI tools in enhancing your analysis and the quality of insights generated.
• Communication: The clarity, organization, and persuasiveness of your final presentation and policy memo.