The fleshing out of an idea requires just enough background to understand the basic approach, its advantages, applications, and the work needed going forward.  Many times, proposals will be improvements to existing products.  Other times, they will require an extended period of demonstration of concept, pilot studies, and scale-up.  However, in all cases, the proposal is the framework that is filled in with details over a phased project.  

I develop proposals as a deck of slides since visuals accompanied with notes are the best way to communicate to a broad audience.  The language should be simple and straightforward; drawings/graphs/charts illustrate concepts that otherwise would be abstract.   The proposal describes the “state of the art” without doing a full-blown literature survey.  Finally, the pitch (proposal presentation) should be accompanied by sparks of enthusiasm.  If the work is interesting and the possibilities are self-evident, it is not necessary to pile on bells, whistles, and all manner of animation.

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The example proposal is one that I put together for a recent Houston Hackathon.  Each page asks a question whose answer is compared across the board.  Depending on the number of proposals, judges typically score or rank entries one question at a time.  Apart from competitions, conversations with experts in a specific area focus on a subset of these questions.  Here, the structure of the Q&A promotes an exchange of information, feedback, and referrals