White Paper Evolution

What’s so great about white papers? They’re just thoughts that address a problem or showcase org. capability, aren’t they? NO. They indeed are a big deal, as you’d find out here.

“Sometimes it could just be a simple thought that counts & also what it takes to affect a big change”

🤔💡Did you know?

“The whole idea / concept of the bitcoin and how it was supposed to function was researched & published as a white paper by Satoshi Nakamoto which carries a reputation of being the most popular & successful one, who apparently is credited with mining the first ever bitcoin and presumably sits on a net worth of US $18 bn. as of today”.

1.0 Some Etymology & The Past

1.1 Definition

Wikipedia defines “White paper” as:

“A white paper is an authoritative report or guide that often lists issues & how to solve them. The term originated when government papers were coded by color to indicate distribution.”

Image credits: Bitcoin White Paper by Satoshi Nakamoto

1.2 Significance & Purpose

Generally speaking a white paper could be thought of as clarifying & advocating how taking a certain path / route could work as a best solution to a particular problem. When the same thing is employed for commercial purposes it could lead to influencing changes in the whole organizational decision-making processes & at times strategic standpoint as well, affecting all the current users as much as also helping prospects change their perspective & outlook to the situation.

Which is very usually what students furnish at the university levels over their research. So, how’s it different from a research paper or is there any difference at all in the first place?

1.3 Comparison to Research Papers

If you have finished your Ph. D / are in the process of doing so, you’d correlate to this better. Research papers are bound to take a really long time as it starts with conducting deep research of a problem space, ecosystem that is correlative & tied to a highly specific / niche area of study & of course is subject to many internal / external reviews & approvals before they are given the go-ahead.

On the other hand, white papers outline an issue that are more focused on solving industry problems and explore the possibility of fitting it with the best solution.

Both still remain thoughts on paper as long as they’re implemented. But once done, they could change the way the world functions, if not the whole world at least that specific segment facing the issue / problem, depending of course on the scope of the problem that is.

1.4 Variants

What’s with the color white? Why not some other color?

Back in the day “white paper” referred to an official government report, indicative of the authority it carried. In the same vein even today, it is often seen how writers do take that very stance when they happen to furnish white papers so as to mean it as a solution to a problem a particular segment in the market is facing.

Of course. There are color variations to it. Some of them include:

• Green paper - proposal or consultative document

• Blue paper – carries tech specs of a new & upcoming technology per se

• Yellow paper – research yet to be proven / published in a journal, aka “Preprint”

---

2.0 History (leading into the Present)

🤔💡Did you know?

“A white paper written for a big corporate organization as of today, which in all probability focuses on problem-solving could fetch the writer US $5,000 – 7,000 on an average”.

2.1 How it all started

From the first instance of it, which was the Churchill White Paper of 1922 (refer citations at the end of the article) in the UK to the most recent B2B orgs. using it to make a strong business case, build awareness, all of it directed towards increasing sales, the instrument itself has undergone many changes.

When it was floated a century ago in 1922, it was meant to be a supreme order directed by the government to declare & align every council member formally to a thought also meant to represent some sort of a stand taken.

The white paper has seen some great misalignment as well with things going totally haywire in 1969 (refer citations at the end of the article) with one such paper released by the Canadian government was faced up with strict opposition grossly by almost everyone involved leading to activism kicking in and finally being withdrawn a year later in 1970.

2.2 The Tone

The main objective of the whitepaper even as you go into history as well is to announce / enforce an order strictly. So, it is only but natural that the writing as well ought to be authoritative so as command the due attention it deserves and the fact that it is released from a trustworthy & proprietary source ought to build a lot of credibility automatically elevating it to a level of manuscripts from the ancient Vedas & Upanishads so to speak.

Also, it goes without saying that the person writing the white paper ought to exhibit a high level of expertise in the underlying subject / topic sans which the tone might sound very informal and would end up failing to make an impact one is looking to generate, also bracketing it under “unprofessionalism”.

2.3 The Content

• When white papers have to maintain an official, professional & authoritative tone what is it that constitutes a white paper?

• What goes into creating one?

• What sections is it supposed to carry?

Although a white paper could have many purposes attached and the content that goes in there could depend entirely on it, there is a standardized format, a template so to speak in building it which broadly may include:

2.4 Use Cases

From passing orders / ordinances to more recent times where white papers have been used as common marketing tool is especially a drift the corporates seem to have caught up well with. And when refers to marketing, the motivation is to directly sell / lead to some sort of sale in the future.

Here are a few use cases:

2.5 Product Ecosystem & Product Management

When the use cases vary as depicted above with each of them having its own purpose, let’s consider the ones prominently applicable to product management.

Let’s try and build a deeper understanding with a case study.

• Go back in time to consider the year 2007

• The BITCOIN was yet to take birth back then

• The term cryptocurrency was unknown and yet to dawn on the people of the world

a) Thought leadership white paper

Even before the final & actual version of the bitcoin white paper was written and released in 2008 let’s assume that for a second there was another such white paper put out by the same source that spoke in length about things like:

• the limitations with the existing currencies

• the motivations for introducing something new like the crypto

• how it could be deemed to be foolproof

• how using it would be able to prevent the fraud better

without actually going into the details of the Tech, architecture, design, solutions.

That right there fits the description of a Thought leadership whitepaper perfectly as it implants thoughts into the reader’s minds and forces them to think.

b) Problem-solving white paper

Arbitrarily assuming that there was another whitepaper released and this one talked in length about:

• the problems with the currencies being used right now in the world

• the way each and every geography seems to have their own currency

• the potential of losses due to currency conversions & currency pegging

• how there is no regularized & streamlined common currency across the world right now

could fit the bill as for the problem-solving whitepaper.

c) Technical white paper

The technical white paper could delve a lot deeper into the details that are deemed essential for the implementation. For instance, it could be all of these:

• basics of the currency, the barter bit, how it is supposed to work

• how it was going to be built, architected

• how it was going to be safeguarded - the hashing functions, privacy et. al.

• how the network would play its part

• the calculations, the math

d) Visionary white paper

The final version of the bitcoin white paper qualifies perfectly as a Visionary white paper as it had all the elements embedded in there and also carried a vision into the distant future about how the transactions could pan out online and how the value could be generated, added and exchanged.

---

3.0 The Future

We already are well aware of how whitepapers though not the de-facto / default in many cases, have been used especially by the big tech orgs. in the corporate world to publish problems that many other orgs. / people operating in that space can correlate to and then strategically sow those thoughts of solutioning whilst proposing the manner in which the whole problem ought to be approached over getting it all sorted.

Given the way many of us seem to face an acute shortage of time & also being lost for choices, leading to a sharp drop in our attention span to as low and equivalent to a 5-year old kid who is just out kindergarten, for now I envision these as major changes over the whitepaper culture & the use of it henceforth:

---

4.0 Citations

1. The 1922 White paper

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Churchill_White_Paper_Correspondence_with_the_Palestine_Arab_Delegation_and_the_Zionist_Organisation._Presented_to_Parliament_by_Command_of_His_Majesty_June,_1922.djvu

2. The 1969 White paper

• https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/the-white-paper-1969

  ---