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Deconstructing the Challenge Proposal part II: The body of the proposal.
Down to 2 weeks to go and I’m sure many of you are wondering what to put in the body of your proposals. My first recommendation is please follow the format. In order to be consistent as a judge the format has to be uniform across all submissions, thus enabling us to really look at the content. I’ll make some suggestions on each section today, but these are by no means exhaustive and certainly not the only way to go (as long as you follow the format).
Let’s look at each main section:
Proposed Innovation
“Describe your innovative concept, product or process from another part of the world or different industry that Canadian financial services providers should adopt.”
You’ve teased us in the executive summary, now you can give details! Bring in the context of your idea, why you feel it has value and for whom and start fleshing it out.
Give tight conclusions on the “whys” and results, but you don’t need to provide every shred of evidence here; use the appendices to hold your evidence and back up your proposed results.
You can describe:
- Describe the target of your innovation and their value structure. Who are they? Give us their characteristics and the conclusions on what they will need to change and why they will benefit.
- The description of the innovation itself: why is it, what does it do, for whom, when, where, where it’s coming from, why you think its important etc.
- The unmet need or opportunity your innovation targets, or the risk it mitigates.
- Interim conclusions, summaries of results and proposed incomes; make the reader want to continue on to find out more.
- Why your innovation is something Financial Services providers don’t know or do but should!
- Anything you feel really introduces your innovation to us and sets the Canadian Financial Services context.
Implementation Plan
“Describe, at a high level, the key things that should be considered for development and implementation of this idea.”
This is the real meat of your proposal. Here you answer the implied part of the Challenge; that is HOW Financial Services providers actually would use your idea. A great idea without a plan attached is not yet an innovation. Here you add the plan and really start to create an innovation.
We know you’ll have made assumptions about the sector, and costs and even lines of business and that’s OK. Just be sure to clearly state what assumptions you made. It’s the framework that you are setting out to make your innovation fly that we really want to see. Remember this is another section to expand on your idea. Give us the key elements, tactics, capabilities and steps here and any conclusions justifying them, but put the detailed evidence in your appendix.
We want to know that you have a vision on how your innovation will work!
Impact of your Innovation
“Describe the area (who or what) your innovation will impact and the outcome. What implications does this have for the future of Canadian Financial Services?”
This is a fantastic area to really give us the “sell”. Show us who your innovation will add value for. Tell us your insights into those stakeholders, clients or employees. Tell us how this will change Canadian Financial Services, a line of business, business unit or customer relationship. And the real fun of innovation is taking us into the realm of the possible; make a call on how your innovation will shape the future.
Appendices
I love appendices. By putting evidence and information in the appendices you can write a very nimble proposal which focuses on the key elements, conclusions and RESULTS while referring the reader to your appendices for the evidence. And since we do not limit the word count on the appendices or in fact the format you can really beef up your argument here.
Deconstructing the Challenge Proposal part I: Peer Voting Synopsis and the Executive Summary
From the feedback and questions I’ve received it seems like the teams are all working hard on their innovative concepts and have taken their stance on what the Challenge question can mean. (Tricky of us to have an open, forward looking Challenge question isn’t it? That makes for the most fun innovation!) I thought I would tackle the proposal template for you to make sure you can spend more time on your idea and have less to worry about in the write up. Unfortunately we can’t post the contents of prior years’ proposals. I can go through the proposal section by section in the next few posts, giving you some insight into what should appear there.
Today I’ll write about what in effect are the final sections to write, the Peer Voting Synopsis (PVS) and the Executive Summary (ES). I think you should understand these sections first, complete the body of the proposal with an eye to these two front sections and then come back to complete the PVS and ES.
Peer Voting Synopsis:
This is a departure from most formal business proposals or cases. Since there is a pretty good chance that your team may be chosen for peer voting you have to have an “elevator pitch” prepared for the audience of the Challenge. Imagine that you are in an elevator with a group of top Executives and you have only a few minutes (or in this case 250 words) to give them enough insight into your idea that they would want to give you the time for a full presentation or even better ask for a copy of the proposal on the spot. What you say has to be tight, compelling and to the point. Remember, in this case it’s your peers reading your PVS and sending your team in for a chance at $20,000.00! Final tip: Have a couple of people who know nothing about your proposal read your PVS and then ask them a) to tell you what they think your concept is and b) if they would vote for you.
Executive Summary:
This is a key section in a complete proposal. It’s called an executive summary for a reason. It really is an…. EXECUTIVE…. SUMMARY…. In the real world you have about a page to hook and Exec into wanting to spend the next ½ hour with your proposal. If you don’t hook them, they won’t read further, unlike the academic world where the ES is more of a primer as your reader/Prof/TA has to read your proposal. In our judging everyone does read the proposals completely but your ES is the first impression.
- State your problem and assumptions clearly and succinctly. Tell us exactly what you are tackling, why this is important and in what context it’s important.
- State proposed results and outcomes. Cliffhanger endings are for TV and movies. You want an executive to read on? Jump them ahead to the AMAZING result, and tell them if they read deeper they can find out the exact details. Readers want to hear “what’s in it for me” early. Dedicate about a paragraph or two to this.
- State anything that is really special or stands out about your idea. One or two lines about what we’ll find in your idea that we won’t find anywhere else is very compelling. Your audience will read on for fear of missing out on something great!
- Avoid giving a team bio or long winded explanation of how you came up with the idea, unless it is absolutely essential for some reason. If you must, keep it very short and indicate more details are in the body of the proposal or appendix.
- Summarize, summarize summarize. This is not the place for the whole plan to be laid out. Tell the reader you have a plan and the details in the briefest way possible. Indicate the full plan is in the body of the report. Summarize the ES once, then reread it and see if you can summarize more. Repeat. A masterful ES is a tease that makes the reader want those plan details.
- Final tip: Just like the peer voting synopsis, have a few people read your ES and then ask them (without reading it from the ES) to tell you what they think your idea is and what the outcome of implementation will be. If what they say sound substantially different from what you think your idea is you need a rewrite on the ES. Ask the reader if your ES makes them want to read on and find out more.
Team collaboration space is open!
Today we have expanded our Campus Innovation Center to include a collaboration space for the student teams participating in our Challenge. This is being launched as a pilot being run through RBC Applied Innovation. Sometime on Monday Nov 17th, all the students registered for the Challenge will receive an invitation to register for the Campus Innovation Center, powered by Igloo Software, subject line “You Are Invited”. This is completely optional; if any students have an established or preferred method to collaborate they should continue to use it. If not, or they want to help with the pilot, they can give this “space” a try.
What can we do with it?
Teams will be able to edit the team’s space, share documents and discuss in a team forum. And only the members of that team have access to the specific team’s space. At the end of the Challenge (shortly after Dec 5th) the collaboration spaces will be closed. We’ll send an evaluation out to anyone who uses the space and community to gather their feedback. REMEMBER this is an optional, experimental collaboration space. We cannot guarantee all data, be sure to back up your files in an alternate location.
The Public Space:
The public area of the Campus Innovation Center is dedicated to showcasing innovation at Canadian colleges and universities. The public space, featuring a few universities who provided some seed material, is an open forum. Please feel free to share and comment, and to tell others about it. Once you’ve signed up for the team space you are a member of the community as a whole and you can upload and comment on the Campus Innovation material too! Not on a student team? You can sign up for access to the Campus Innovation Center and be able to fully participate in the public discussion and contribute to a school’s profile.
How do I get to my Team space?
We included the team space sign up instructions in an advance email, but I thought I would repeat them here.
Sign up and login instructions for your team space:
1. Click the link in the Igloo invitation email.
2. Complete fields as required: Name, email address, password and “captcha” security code.
3. On the Community home page select Teams from the top navigation options.
4. Scroll down to until you see a folder marked “Group 1”, “Group 2” etc. in the document repository at the bottom of the page. Click this folder. (NOTE: If you are not logged in you will not be able to see Group or Team Folders.)
5. From the Group # page select the folder named for your team from the document repository and enter your team space.
6. Enter your team space.
7. (recommended) Bookmark this page.
8. (recommended) Review the features of Igloo collaboration spaces.
Your team folder has a copy of the Innovation Challenge submission template in the document repository.
You have full edit rights to your space and can alter it as you see fit. Only your team mates and the RBC Applied Innovation administrator can view this space, but please keep the content professional and appropriate. I’ll stress once more that this is an optional space; feel free to collaborate in whatever fashion you and your group feel works for you. But we’d love for a few teams to try this one out and tell us what they think.
Getting Started!
First, thank you all for registering!
The Challenge now feels like it is really underway. The Innovator Challenge team would like to thank all of the students who took the time to get their teams registered. We also want to thank all of the professors, program administrators, student councils and clubs who contributed so much to getting the word out about this year’s Challenge.
We’re very excited to see teams from across Canada and from some very innovative schools. There are even some teams with students from different schools coming together in a terrific sense of open innovation and “coop-tition”.
So, What Next?
I’m going to recycle a bit, I wrote this about the same time last year but I think it’s the right steps to get started on your proposal. I’ve updated it a bit, and I’m sure that more than a few of you might have jumped right in, but it bears repeating.
Shortly (if not already) all registered students will receive the kick off email with updates and suggestions. We recommend you keep an eye on our blog to stay up to date; you can even set up an RSS feed.
A few other suggestions:
• Review the resources we’ve posted here on the site. Read through the Challenge details page and review the rules and regulations, judging and even the professor’s notes. Also drop into the Innovation Center to listen to the FAQ podcast, check out our Innovation course to find out what Innovation at RBC is like and view the Slideshare presentations on Innovation.
• Your proposals must be in by Dec 5th, so get your group structure and roles worked out as soon as you can. Will you meet regularly or collaborate remotely? Do you need or want to have a coordinator? Getting the little things out of the way can make you much more nimble down the road.
• Get researching and brainstorming. You may already have your area or areas for investigation picked, but dig a little deeper, toss some ideas around and get creative. Who knows what innovative combinations you can find?
• Ask questions. Please ask us anything you think is important, either here in the blog or through nextgreatinnovator@rbc.com. Keep in mind we will answer the question publicly in a blog post, but chances are if you have a question so do other teams.
• Find a mentor, coach or subject matter expert. Teams can use whatever resources they deem fit, as long as the final proposal is solely the original work of the team. A prof, innovation practitioner or even an ace editor could help you make your innovative idea come to life.
• Get feedback on your ideas! You can share a synopsis of your idea out to a list of friends and advisors as part of your team profile. Just log in, enter the synopsis, create your share list and send. Each person on the list can then log in and leave comments and even rate your idea.
Get your RSS set up on our Innovator blog as I will be working through various aspects of the proposal and how to make a great innovation over the next few weeks. Each post could be just what your team needs!
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