Boyd Essay Contest: Call for Submissions
How can America improve its problem-solving capacity?
Peter here. I’m very excited to be running my second sprint here at the Boyd Institute and appreciate everyone who is following us along on this journey. Over the coming weeks, you should expect to hear more from us about our new topic and the plans we have for the next 3 months. But today, I wanted to focus on our essay contest for this sprint.
Frankly, of everything we did last quarter, I viewed the essay contest as the single largest success. The level of enthusiasm I saw in many of your submissions was deeply touching and confirmed my hypothesis that there exists, dormant in America, a deep desire to participate in the process of improving this country. Our current sprint topic deals with that directly — and asks the following:
“How can America improve its problem-solving capacity?”
Admittedly, this is a broad topic — much broader than “housing” — and that is by design. As we continued to think about the role of the Boyd Institute and the problems America faces, it became increasingly clear that at the heart of everything is a breakdown in our country’s ability to actually solve its problems.
There are thousands of interesting ideas for every issue imaginable, and yet there appears to be no reliable mechanism to actually reform anything. As a result, at least from where we stand, it seems like our country is slowly atrophying.
I’ll leave it to you to decide the angle you think is best to approach this from. Is our electoral system broken? Have we become too reliant on the state in general to do things? Is there a federal–state incentive mismatch? Is the problem that we have too many lawyers and not enough engineers, à la Dan Wang’s Breakneck? The goal here is to spark a conversation that gets at what we see as the core of the problem.
To facilitate this goal we have decided to alter the structure of the essay contest relative to how we ran it last sprint. Rather than running it like a traditional essay contest, where people submit their essays privately to a black box and at the end we announce winners.
We have opted to ask people to publish their articles on their own Substacks as soon as they are ready, and we will reward the best essays at the end of the sprint.
I’ll get more into the details of what this looks like later in the article, but the change stemmed from two primary frictions with the traditional model.
First, and most importantly, we received far more award-worthy articles than we could possibly hope to give prizes to, and this resulted in many of the submissions literally never seeing the light of day. Out of our 39 submissions, only 11 — less than a third — were published by us. Of those 11, 8 were put into an anthology as pdf attachments, meaning they were seen by only a fraction of the audience they should have reached.
Second, the central purpose of an essay contest, in our eyes, is to bring subscribers and engagers into the conversation around our topic. To the extent people put their ideas out early and often, it allows everyone to iterate and learn from one another. As with last time, we will only allow one final submission per applicant, but if you decide you want to update or even write an entirely new essay after reading someone else’s work — or for any other reason — you are encouraged to do so up until March 15th, when the essay contest closes. Information silos are bad, and we want to open the windows wide.
It is our promise that if you submit something, we will read it, internalize it, and judge it on its merits. The hope is that this format will transform the essay contest from a black box into something of an online salon.
In our last iteration, we wound up awarding a total prize pool of $6,900. I would expect our final payout this time to be around the same, so there is real money to be made for participants.
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to DM me here, and I will be sure to respond with clarifications. Best of luck, and may the best essays win!
We have opted to ask people to publish their articles on their own Substacks as soon as they are ready, and we will reward the best essays at the end of the sprint.
Prizes and Recognition
Grand Prize: USD $2,500 cash, re-publication and promotion on our Substack, and the honorary title of Boyd Fellow for one year.
Second Prize (Runner-Up): USD $1,000 and re-publication/promotion on our Substack.
Third Prize (Runner-Up): USD $1,000 and re-publication/promotion on our Substack.
Additional Publication: We may offer a USD $300 honorarium to authors whose essays we choose to re-publish beyond the top three.
Eligibility
Human (not AI) entrants aged 18 or older are eligible. One essay per author.
The contest is open worldwide, but the focus of this contest is on identifying novel solutions for the United States.
Essays need to be published on the author’s personal Substack account. They must attribute the post to the Boyd Institute at the top of the submission, and they must share the link to the article and contact information via THIS Google Form.
Submission Guidelines
Format: For an article to be considered for the prize pool, it must be:
Published without a paywall on the author’s personal Substack account before the deadline.
Acknowledge at the top of the article that it was created as part of the essay contest.
The author must submit a Google Form HERE with a link, acceptance of terms and conditions, and other contact information.
Language: Submissions must be in English.
Original Work: Essays must be original and authored by the entrant.
AI Assistance Disclosure: If you use AI tools to brainstorm or edit your essay, briefly describe how you used them in a note attached to your Google Form submission. Fully AI-generated essays are not permitted.
Deadline: 11:59 PM Eastern Time on Friday, March 15th, 2026. Late entries will not be accepted. We will announce the winners and award prize money at the end of March.
Evaluation Criteria
Our judges will evaluate submissions based on:
Originality: How novel and creative is the idea? This is a gnarly challenge, and we need outside-the-box thinking!
Potential for Impact: If your idea were implemented, would it significantly improve America’s ability to solve its problems? We are looking for ideas that substantially move the needle.
Actionability: Does the proposal offer a concrete and realistic path forward? Is it feasible within existing technological and/or political-economy constraints?
Clarity and Quality: Is the essay well organized and easy to follow? Is the proposal articulated persuasively for the general public, policymakers, and experts? While polished prose helps, we care most about the strength of your ideas.
How to Submit
Prepare your essay following the guidelines above.
Publish the article on Substack.
Complete the online submission form HERE
Provide your contact details.
Link to your Substack post.
Confirm that you have read and agree to the Terms and Conditions.
I can't wait to be politely declined!
Oh this is going to be so much fun. I'm already running through a structure and idea in my head. Really excited to see what everyone comes up with!