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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.

Posted by Tim on November 24, 2008 4:41 PM

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