The Capstone Project. Let's talk about the Capstone Project. The thing about the Capstone Project, first of all, let's get past the word. I had to look it up myself, I had no idea what a capstone was. It turns out that it's the high point in something, it's when all the activities come together to bring something that's wonderful and unique. Don't worry too much about the Capstone Project, it's just the word that Coursera uses. However, the Capstone Project itself is very interesting and it's something that we're going to talk about and it's something that is really important. It's very important to finish all the work you've been doing with impact. If you don't finish something with impact in many ways you haven't got the full value out of it, and I certainly want you to get the full value out of what you're doing. The Capstone Project we've chosen for you is to write a magazine article. I want you to write a magazine article on the scale-up of your choice. Now, when I talk about a magazine article, I'm not just talking about words, I'm actually talking about the whole article. I'll get onto that in a second and explain to you in a lot more detail. Not 1,000 words but 4,000 words is a long-form article. Long-form articles are much more interesting than short-form articles that you might read. Long-form articles allow you to go into a lot of detail about the company that perhaps you wouldn't be able to. Actually, long-form articles are the newest form of journalism. You're seeing more and more about magazines that are having more value than perhaps magazines that are going away. Let me talk a bit about the type of company I want you to write about. The type of company I want you to write about is less the Googles and the Facebooks and the Amazon and these kinds of companies. In fact, the company I want you to write about is a company from your own country. I also have difficulty saying company and country together, but anyway, well, we managed it this time. The thing about writing about a company from the country you're in is that you will know a lot more about that than perhaps somebody looking from a far. I can start to talk about companies in China, I can even start to talk about companies in Silicon Valley, but when you're in the country you know much better about what makes them tick. You can also perhaps talk to people who are working in the company and get insight about what they do rather than just reading from a corporate analysis about what they're doing. My strong recommendation is to write about a company from the country you're in. I got it right that time, I'm really happy with myself. Anyway, let's continue. Think about it in three steps. The first step is always this idea of what the scale-up has done right to scale. They will always have done something in the area of process, or in the area of product, or in the area people that allow them to scale. The next thing though is what they have to do now because, of course, when a company scales, it comes under competitive pressure, so you might find that other people in the sector are reacting. What do they have to do to keep scaling is the other thing that should be in a capstone. The final part then is what you as the CEO. You have to be the owner, you have to be the person taking the decision, and that's really important to think that you are capable of doing that. Don't ever believe that you're not good enough to be a founder or a CEO because you absolutely are. You should have the confidence to say, having studied this company, I know what they should do next. My advice is to write the 4,000 words first. Just write the words, don't think too much about pictures and things like that, and then go to the words and identify the things that you really want to emphasize, and then find a picture or create a chart or do something like that that really brings your work to life. This is going to be a peer reviewed assignment, so what you have to think is that when the person opens it, does it jump at them? Does it make them look as it's something they really want to read? That is super important because all of us in life we want to have something that begins well. Once you begin something well, you gently keep going. Have some impact when you open it visually, make it look like this is almost something that love has gone into rather than something that you wanted to do just to complete the course. How long will it take? Well, 4-8 weeks and 40 hours is what Coursera recommend and that's actually fine. Don't think about it in terms of what you have to do, but think in terms of revisions. Sometimes when you do something really quickly, you don't get the value of it. If you talk to famous writers that often, they will tell you that they go back to something again and again and revise, get other people to read it, and that's where the real value comes. In a way, writing is almost exponential, that it's slowly in the beginning and then it really comes into the end. The final thing I want to say is that the value of a great capstone is actually better than a CV. CVs can be very dead static documents. I've compared people's CVs to their birth certificate, it's just a list of things, but there's no real life comes up the page. A good capstone document, a good capstone assignment is something that you can show to people which demonstrates your ability, which is something more than just the CV. That's what I would say to you, which is bring all the work together that you have done over all of the time and all of the specialization that we have been through together. Bring it all together, put in your 40 hours, put in your 4-6 weeks, and come in the end with a document that you can send to people that shows all the value that you have and everything that you've learned throughout the process. The very best of luck.
