What is the test?
Three questions, asked in order. Discriminator: what is true about us that is not true about the credible competition, stated as fact, not aspiration. Criterion: which scored criterion does it move, at what weight, named from the evaluation schedule, not inferred. Proof: what evidence will the evaluators credit (projects, referees, data) held today. A “theme” failing any leg is a sentence for the executive summary, not a reason to bid. Labelled example: “only bidder operating this asset class in-region” (discriminator), on a 20-percent local-delivery criterion; proof, three current contracts with referees. Each leg named; each leg checkable.
The broad criteria live on the twelve questions; incumbent-shaped packs need the incumbent test first; a theme cannot beat a wired pack, only misprice the attempt. Scoring mechanics are on evaluation criteria and weightings.
When does a theme mislead?
When it discriminates on an unscored virtue (culture, passion, partnership) that no criterion rewards. When the proof postdates the close: “we will have” scores nothing. When it describes the whole market (“quality-focused delivery”) and therefore no bidder. And when its absence is treated as failure: conforming competence wins price-led and tightly specified tenders every week, theme-free. The gate question is never “do we have a theme” but “does anything we can prove move a scored criterion competitors cannot match.”
What does this mean for the bid/no-bid call?
Fund pursuits with tested themes harder and earlier; fund themeless pursuits only where conforming competence genuinely suffices, and kill pursuits whose only theme is hope, before they become zombies. The theme test belongs in the meeting’s evidence round, not in week three’s executive summary.