CSCE 481: Seminar

Spring 2017

• Home
  
  
• Assignments
  
  
• Schedule
  
  

Executive Summary Long Writing Assignment

The last three+ decades have brought about an amazing growth in Computing. The rate of innovation in Computing Technology and associated services has been arguably exponential. With Processing and Communication Technology prowess at its core, the Internet has enabled monumental inflection points1 in the manner in which our society lives, learns, and interacts. Some noted recent examples of these inflection points are Smartphone, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. One has to wonder - did these inflection points just occur because someone came up with a bright idea one day, did they really evolve but in the form of a silent revolution, or were they dormant waiting for a trigger? Was our society always screaming for these capabilities and no one was hearing? Did the society know what was possible? Did the technology not exist, and if it did, was it not affordable?

1. Provide an executive summary of the major technology inflection points that have shaped (and continue to shape) our society as it is today.
2. Synthesize your learnings in the form of a summary with supporting material and thoughts on how these inflection points came about to shape the confluence (or coming together of sorts) of "societal needs" and "technological innovations".
3. Conclude with your key takeaways for the shape of things to come.

This is a big topic for which a true thorough evaluation would require far more study than what can be done in limited time in one class. However, you should be able to get a good sense of the subject matter from magazines/books/online searches coupled with thought exercise based on your learnings. The main goal here is to ensure that you can read multiple documents, synthesize them, and generate a well-written executive summary.

The purpose of an executive summary is to concisely convey the synthesis of relevant points from a longer document or set of documents. Generally, it will propose a synthesis, with proper justification given by a summary of the relevant information. To that end, below are some documents that you can consider when forming your executive summary; you should read at least a good subset of these. You may expand and use other documents, also. Note that all documents you refer to should be cited!

You can find some details about writing executive summaries at: http://writingcenter.tamu.edu/Students/Writing-Speaking-Guides/Alphabetical-List-of-Guides/Professional-Writing/Executive-Summaries or at http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/guide.cfm?guideid=76 though there are many other online sources, also. You should begin the document with a strong initial paragraph that gives the overall summary clearly. The following paragraphs should summarize the issues, followed by a full justification. Being concise and direct is even more important in an executive summary than in most other documents.

Your summary should be 1.5 to 3 pages in length (not counting citations). One rule of thumb is that an executive summary is 5% to 10% of the length of the document(s) it summarizes. That means that you would expect to read 15-60 pages of information in putting together your document. Reading the sources below should be sufficient for this assignment but you may find it helpful to do some additional reading, also.

Here are some online articles that discuss issues relevant to the topic. Sometimes the comments are actually informative, also:

• A Business Insider article about YouTube
• Journey through the last 30 years of technology
• Mashable facts about Youtube
• Innovating the Toyota, and YouTube, way
• A treasure trove of articles on Twitter
• Facebook Article from NYTimes
• Here's a 6 minute video made by Google outlining how the search engine has evolved
• Netflix uses bittorrent to determine which shows to purchase
• A history of how Amazon, Twitter, and SpaceX have developed and been disruptive.
• Where Google is heading
• Some discussion of possible near future trends
• The wiki way
• The Apple Revolution
• From 0 To $1 Billion In Two Years: Instagram
• How PayPal Works
• The History of Ebay

Remember that you are welcome to use other resources, also, if you wish – you should cite all resources used, though! Remember to add citations to the document itself, not just the cover page. Citations do not count toward page limitations.

Strong Introduction

• High[15]: Clear, strong introductory paragraph.
• Medium[10]: Distinct introductory paragraph.
• Low[0]: Vague introductory paragraph with minimal content.

Direct Paragraphs

• High[20]: Clear concise paragraphs, usually with clear topics.
• Medium[15]: Paragraphs are easy to understand but are not concise or meander.
• Low[0]: Individual paragraphs are not coherent or concise.

Accurate Summaries

• High[25]: The reference material is accurately summarized and clearly cited as appropriate.
• Medium[15]: Reference material was summarized but vague or had errors of interpretation.
• Low[0]: Reference material was not summarized or was referred to only cursorily.

Recommendation/Takeaway

• High[25]: The recommendation/takeaway is clear, concise, and well justified.
• Medium[15]: There is a recommendation/takeaway, but it is weakly written and the justification is not as clear.
• Low[0]: It is difficult to understand what is being communicated.

Completeness

• High[15]: All relevant ideas are included in summary.
• Medium[10]: Most major ideas are included in the summary and justification.
• Low[0]: Key ideas are missing from the summary or justification.