Verified research brief

What you are building#

A one-page brief that answers a genuinely contested question, backed by sources you traced yourself.

This is the single most transferable document in the entire curriculum. The same structure, with different words on it, is a market assessment, a policy note, a technical evaluation, a due-diligence summary and a recommendation to a manager. Learn to produce it once and you can produce all of those.

Why this one#

Most people can find information. Far fewer can find it, check it, notice where it conflicts, and then commit to a position while being honest about what they do not know.

That last part is the whole skill. Anyone can write a confident brief by ignoring inconvenient evidence. Anyone can write an uncertain one by refusing to conclude. The difficult, valuable thing is a brief that concludes and tells you where it might be wrong.

Choosing your question#

Pick something where you genuinely do not know the answer, and where credible people disagree. It should matter to you — you will do better work on a question you actually care about.

Good candidates:

• Something being decided at your workplace right now
• A purchase or commitment over ₹20,000 that you are unsure about
• A claim in your field that everyone repeats and nobody sources
• A policy or rule that affects you and that you have never actually read

Poor candidates: questions with a settled answer (you will just be summarising), and questions that are purely value judgements (no evidence will resolve them — though a brief on what the trade-offs actually are can be excellent).

The structure#

Keep it to one page. The constraint is the point: it forces you to decide what matters.

QUESTION
  One sentence. Scoped: who, what, when.
  Plus one line on what you deliberately excluded.

ANSWER
  Two to four sentences. Your actual conclusion, with its conditions.
  Written so a busy reader could stop here and still act correctly.

EVIDENCE
  Three to five points. Each with its source and what that source
  actually measured. Not a list of links.

WHERE SOURCES DISAGREE
  What conflicts, and why. If nothing conflicts, say so — and say
  whether that is because the question is settled or because you
  only found one kind of source.

WHAT I COULD NOT DETERMINE
  Plainly. This section makes the rest trustworthy.

WHAT WOULD CHANGE THIS
  What evidence would move your conclusion, and where you would look.

How to work through it#

Constraints#

• One page. Not two. Cutting is part of the work.
• Every factual claim carries a source you could hand to someone else.
• At least one thing you could not determine. If you genuinely determined everything, the question was too easy.
• No AI-generated citations you have not personally opened. AI can help you search, structure and edit. It cannot be the reason you believe something.

When you are done#

You have an artifact. Keep it.

This is portfolio material — in an interview, "here is a research brief I wrote on a contested question, and here is how I handled the fact that the sources disagreed" is a considerably stronger answer than "I'm good at research".