Project & Proposal

Overview

What is a white paper? It can mean many things. Generally, it is a comprehensive explanation of the state of the art of a new technology or social phenomenon. It is a document that is designed to present the case for a particular strategic decision. In most cases today, it veers closely to marketing, albeit generally with more facts than hyperbole (though not always). For this course, we are not looking for marketing literature, but for the kind of briefing a think tank might produce: opinionated but not biased. By reading your white paper, a person should feel that they understand the current state of the art, and have an idea of the trajectory of a new idea within a field, as well as the threats and opportunities offered by that trajectory. It need not include original, primary research (e.g., surveys or social experimentation), but it should draw together the current literature and thinking on a topic.

In this class, the final project will be for you—in groups of two or three students—to create a white paper and a presentation. These should be of professional quality, polished, precise, accurate, and interesting. By the end of the semester, you should feel confident in identifying yourself as an expert in this narrow area. I expect that this will not be a description of a specific technology (e.g., the MacBook Pro), but a class of technologies, or a social arrangement or trend.

Choosing a topic

The topic of your white paper should be narrow enough that you can read and understand the related literature exhaustively, but not so narrow that it would be of little interest to a reasonably large group of people. For example, a previous student created a white paper that addressed the use of RFID in food packaging, another took on a more technical issue: GPS-time-synched servers. In both cases, the students examined what choices were critical, explained the evidence that helped to make sense of that, and made recommendations.

You should have in mind a particular group of people who have to make a particular decision. In the first case above, the author was addressing the producers of perishable items, and particularly those who were likely to sell to Wal-Mart, since Wal-Mart was driving the adoption of RFID in several industries. In the second case, the author was addressing people who bought servers that needed to be used in secure operations, especially banking. In both cases, there was some generalized audience in mind, and some idea of what kinds of decisions they might need to make, as well as specific examples of people in the target audience (by name & position). Most food producers may not have even heard of RFID when this paper was created, and while many of the people who purchased servers had used other technologies to keep records of the time, these were generally not GPS driven. As a result, each author needed to educate her respective audience about the technology, its application, its costs, its benefits, the needs it met, the opportunities it created, the threats it entailed.

Each also presented recommendations. These were not simply “You should use RFID.” Often the recommendation is part of a “lynchpin” analysis: if this happens, you are likely to face that threat. Often it indicates conditions under which a decision might be made (e.g., wait until Wal-Mart codifies its standards before purchasing RFID equipment, but begin making changes to your own stock management systems to track RFID codes, in addition to UPC codes, now). The recommendations are rarely simply “buy product X,” but instead lay out the decisions that must be considered in making a strategic decision, and providing the data helpful to making that decision.

Steps in Writing the White Paper

This is a fairly major undertaking, and I don’t want you to expend that much effort going down the wrong path. Rather than asking for a single deliverable at the end of the semester, I am requesting that you provide interim descriptions of the work you are doing:

- Proposal (Oct 18)
- Annotated Bibliography (Oct 30)
- Outline (Nov 6)
- Final white paper, including formatting, charts, graphs, etc. (Dec 11)
- Presentation (Nov 29 / Dec 6)

More details will be provided in assignments for each stage.

Evaluating the Final White Paper

In evaluating the white paper, I will be looking for an expert opinion, grounded in evidence, presented in way easily understandable by someone in your target audience (and by a knowledgeable member of the general public). Generally, a white paper should have the following elements:

First, there should be a very clear explanation of the problem you will be exploring. It is best if you can find a problem. The problem may simply be “your competitors are creating more usable payment services by automatically doing currency exchange,” and then explore the decisions that need to be made in order to implement an automatic currency exchange system. The problem should be stated succinctly, and in such a way that the reader can quickly understand whether the report applies to them. In other words, you need to indicate why the reader should find your paper worth reading. Generally, providing evidence that a crisis or difficulty is looming and that it should be planned for is a good way of doing this.

The white paper should describe the current processes, policies, technologies, or state of events, along with how things came to be as they are now; the state of the art, and how we got there. It should identify the major “drivers” of change, and what effects they have had. It should indicate what organizations or groups are the most influential in this process and why.

The work should draw on, and cite, the major literature of the field. I may not be an expert in each of these areas, but if I can quickly find a piece of literature that appears to refute your position, and you have not cited it, that would not be good. Likewise, I expect the quality of your sources of information to add to your credibility. If you cite Wikipedia and TMZ, we might have a problem.

The writing should be clear, concise, and correct. I can shrug off small errors in your blog posts, but since every word of your final project should have been read at least four or five times, I will not be happy with an “its” for “it’s.” Really, grammatical constructions and a logical arguments are a basic necessity at this level—no amount of cleverness will save you if the writing is bad.

It should be logically organized, each piece clearly fitting together to form a whole. Even a cursory glance should make clear what the subsections of your paper are and how they might fit together to form a larger argument. It should be compelling and interesting, making use of concrete examples, but clearly abstracting them so that general rules can be understood. It should convey a clear feeling of confident expertise.

The work should look good. A plain, double-spaced word document will not do it for me. Think of your audience: probably a group of busy executives. They want eyecatching charts, graphs, and diagrams. They want bullet-points and boxed-text. They want something that is easy to scan, easy to read, easy to parse, and easy to grok deeply.

The final paper presentation should be equally polished and professional. No “umms,” no bullets on your slides, no extemporized talk—unless you are already really good at giving such talks, and imbue this one with a great deal of structure. Since I will be recording the talk at the end of the semester, I recommend that you try recording it and critiquing it ahead of time, either within your group or along with other groups. Again, consider your audience to be a busy group of professionals who have other demands on their time: how do you keep them in their seats with eyes and ears on you?

Proposal

The proposal for your project is due on October 19. The proposal should consist of no more than 1200 words, and should include:

• Who the authors are.
• A summary problem statement: State the problem you will be addressing in 2-3 sentences, and indicate why it is an important problem.
• An indication of the audience you will be addressing; the narrower the better.
• Two or three people whom you would consider experts in this area.
• Two or three articles or books that you think will be essential to your work
• The top academic journal or industry publication that relates to the work you will be addressing.
• A website or two that applies to the work you are doing.
• Some key ideas, technologies, trends, or players that—at this very early stage—you think will be particularly important to the project.
• A plan for assembling the annotated bibliography: who will be looking at what parts of the literature and when? (The bibliography is due on October 30, followed shortly by the outline.)