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Should White Papers Explore Every Option?

By Michael Stelzner

I was teaching a class this week at a major corporation and I opened things up by asking, “What is a white paper?”

After the usual slew of answers, one engineer spoke up and said, “A white paper is designed to educate by being fully objective and exploring all possibilities with readers.”

My question to you: Do you agree? Is this correct?

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 6:48 am and is filed under Writing White Papers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • It's a difficult question to provide a definitive yes or no answer. In general, I would say yes.

    For example, in a competitive analysis white paper, you may want to present how two or three alternative solutions stack up against the main one.

    A lot depends on how many issues need to be presented and how much space should be devoted to each one. If the total page length exceeds 10 pages as a result of covering multiple issues, then I would suggest selecting the single, most important issue in the paper.

    Jonathan
  • Jonathan - Besides page length, do you think it makes sense to cover many sides of an issue in a white paper? - Mike
  • The luxury of exploring every option assumes an unlimited number of pages, something that only a college professor on a sabbatical has the time to read.

    For most business readers, their short attention span dictates a white paper of less than 10 pages. That constraint forces a writer to choose a limited number of viable possibilities to address the topic of the paper.

    Jonathan
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