Position Papers

Reminder: Position papers are mandatory and must be submitted by the deadline in order to be considered for an award.

There will only be one overarching topic for the entire duration of the committee, thus the position paper will not only be quite different from what you may be familiar with structurally, but it should also go into greater depth on the topic. The following is what you should be following as the base guideline, explained in further detail on the Position Paper Guidelines document.

• (15%) Issue Research, including answering the synopsis Questions to Consider.
• (15%) Market Research, start by narrowing down to a specific region and research the specifics of the market.
• (10%) At least 10 bullet-point business startup ideas that you could potentially carry out, each no more than a few sentences.
• (35%) A detailed outline for one of your ideas, including data from initial market research, as well as key insights you collect, and general business model for how you plan to price, disrupt, earn a profit, and what resources you may need.
• (25%) A case study of a real-life, existing company relevant to the topic that is not one of the companies in the topic synopsis, covering how the company came to fruition, overcame obstacles, and grew to success (or did not).
• Your overall research should be 5 to 10 pages in length.
• Works cited