Opening Remarks
Two Audiences
Never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Unknown, often attributed to Mark Twain
You will present the same review, in the same two weeks, to an academic audience and to your practitioner consortium: the findings stay identical, while what counts as proof, what language is available to you, and what the audience actually needs from you all change, applying the rigor-relevance tension from Kick-off in practice.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this unit, you will be able to:
- Present the same finding twice, once for an academic audience and once for a practitioner audience, changing the burden of proof, the language, and the point of reference each time.
- Reframe a boundary condition from an apologetic limitation, for academics, into the actionable core of a recommendation, for practitioners.
- Choose, honestly, which of McGahan’s five routes to actionability your review’s contribution actually takes, rather than the one that sounds most impressive.
Rigor and Relevance, Revisited
The Standing Tension
Rigor: how trustworthy is the finding? Relevance: what does someone do differently tomorrow?
You met these definitions in week one, before rigor and relevance could fully register as two different questions asked by two different audiences rather than properties of good research in themselves, which is why a single presentation script rarely satisfies both.
- Academically, what counts is how robust the finding is: is the review’s method transparent, is the synthesis defensible, are the boundary conditions honestly stated?
- Practically, what counts is what someone does differently tomorrow: is the implication concrete enough to act on, stated in the practitioner’s own vocabulary, not yours?
Neither audience is wrong to ask what it asks. The mistake is answering the academic question in front of practitioners, or the practical question in front of academics.
Boundary Conditions, Reframed
In front of practitioners, a scope limitation is the advisory contribution itself.
What is Theory introduced boundary conditions as the constraints that define where a theory does and does not apply. Academically, you state them almost apologetically, in a “limitations” paragraph. In front of practitioners, invert that instinct: telling a manager precisely where a pattern from the literature stops holding, for organizations of their size, in their sector, under their constraints, is exactly the advice they came for. “This works, except when …” is often more actionable than “this works.”
Worked Example
Academic hedge
“The synthesis suggests that AI-agent autonomy is associated with higher user trust, though this association appears attenuated in safety-critical contexts, across the studies reviewed.”
Practitioner version
“Give your AI agents more autonomy to build user trust, except in safety-critical workflows, where autonomy should stay limited and reviewable.”
Both sentences report the same boundary condition. The academic version hedges because a synthesis across a handful of studies cannot claim more than an association, and needs to signal exactly how much confidence it warrants to another researcher. The practitioner version drops the hedge language, “suggests,” “association,” “appears,” and states the same boundary as a direct instruction with an exception, because a manager needs to know what to do, not how confident the literature is. Model this move live before students write their own pair of sentences.
Actionability
Five Routes to Actionability
Good Topic gave you McGahan’s five routes to actionability as background reading. Today, you will use them as your script for the practice pitch.
- Offering counter-intuitive insights.
- Highlighting the effect of new and important practices.
- Showing inconsistencies in and consequences of practices.
- Suggesting a specific theory to explain an interesting and current situation.
- Identifying an iconic phenomenon that opens new areas of inquiry and practice.
Pick the one that actually describes your review’s contribution, honestly, not the one that sounds most impressive. A synthesis that mainly resolves a contradiction in prior findings is route three, not route one, and pretending otherwise in front of practitioners who know their own domain will cost you credibility fast.
Visualizing Implications
Paper Structure covered how implications get written. In front of a poster, they need to be seen before they are read.
A dense paragraph of implications that works perfectly in a discussion section will not survive a two-minute poster glance. Reduce each implication to a single visual unit, a small diagram, a labeled arrow, a simple before/after, that a reader can grasp before they decide whether to stop and read your text at all.
Two Genres
Key Differences
The findings stay the same. What changes is the burden of proof, the language, and the point of reference.
| Academic poster | Practice pitch | |
|---|---|---|
| Burden of proof | How was this established? Method, sample, synthesis rigor | Is this credible enough to act on? |
| Language | Field terminology, precise hedging | Plain language, the practitioner’s own vocabulary |
| Point of reference | The body of knowledge, prior studies | Their organization, their constraints |
| What “good” looks like | A reviewer could trace your synthesis back to sources | A manager could repeat your recommendation to their boss correctly |
Poster Genre
Reduction, visual guidance, and self-sufficiency, a poster must survive without you narrating it.
A poster follows its own constraints, distinct from a slide deck or a shrunk-down paper:
- Reduction: a viewer decides in seconds whether to stop. Your title and one figure do most of the persuading; everything else is for the reader who already stopped.
- Visual guidance: a clear reading path (top to bottom, left to right, numbered steps) matters more on a poster than in any other format, because you are frequently not standing next to it explaining the order.
- Self-sufficiency: unlike a talk, a poster has to work when you are not there to fill gaps. Write it for the reader who arrives after you have stepped away for coffee.
Design and Delivery Tips
The six practices below adapt Bourne (2007)’s ten rules for good oral presentations to a review pitch specifically.
Tell a convincing story. You cannot present everything you did, choose a narrative that portrays your review well and deliberately leaves room for questions. Budget no more than one slide per two minutes, less is safer. Prepare properly: practice, know your material cold, and have opening and closing statements ready.
Design high-quality panels. Don’t assume ideal viewing conditions, make sure everyone can see and read the content. Avoid busy backgrounds. Use readable typography. Don’t overload a single view, use the upper two-thirds where a standing viewer’s eyes naturally land.
Anticipate questions. Sit in on other teams’ coaching sessions or pitches to get a feel for what gets asked. Do a dry run in front of a friendly, unfamiliar audience to spot what triggers questions you weren’t expecting. It is fine to answer “I don’t know, but I would think …”, that is a more credible answer than a confident guess.
Make the take-home message persistent. Bourne (2007)’s test: ask a listener about your talk a week later, and they should be able to name three points. Decide in advance which three you want remembered, most likely your central finding, its boundary condition, and your recommendation, and repeat them until those are the three a listener would actually recall, not just any three.
Review a recording of your own rehearsal. Listening back exposes habits you cannot hear while you are talking: rushed pacing, a hedge that survived into the practitioner version, a slide you talked past without looking at. Record at least one rehearsal and watch it before the real session.
Have a backup plan. Technology fails. Have a printed handout, cloud-stored slides, and a plan B if the room’s setup does not cooperate.
- What did you learn from the study you did?
- Why did you choose this particular topic, or what was your inspiration?
- What is the significance of your study, or how does it add to the existing body of knowledge?
- How can your main findings be summarized?
- What kind of background research did you do?
- What limitations did you face in writing?
- Why did you choose this particular method or sample?
- What would you include if asked to add something extra?
- What are the recommendations of your study?
- Who made up your sample, and why that group?
- What was your hypothesis, and how did you formulate it?
- If you had the chance, would you do something different?
- What limitations did you face with your sample?
- How did you relate your study to existing theories?
- What is the future scope of this study?
- What do you plan to do with your work afterward?
- What variables did you use?
- Do you have any questions?
- Have you evaluated your work?
- How would you improve your work?
The questions have been compiled by Jason Thatcher and published on LinkedIn.
Homework
Practice your poster presentation and your pitch with a dry run.
Rehearse both your poster draft and your practice pitch out loud. Pro tip: record at least one rehearsal and analyse it using the “Design and delivery tips” section above.