The project brief is considered a pivotal component in corporate-sponsored student projects, yet many university teaching teams lack guidelines and best practices to define, frame, evaluate, and change these briefs with sponsors. We examine a rich data set of 68 project briefs used by 19 partner universities across a decade (2012–2022), drawn from a long-running project course taught at Stanford University and a related academic spinoff consortium called the SUGAR Network. All projects share a similar pedagogy for global innovation challenges and STEM-based team projects. Our study found that corporate sponsors sought seven different types of project outcomes. Although nearly two-thirds (65%) of sponsors adopted “how might we” phrasing in their briefs, other wording like “we dream…” was also used to provoke more imaginative thinking. Moreover, slightly over a third (35%) of briefs focused more on mid-term innovation horizons than near or far-term horizons. Based on these findings, we present a two-question guide for crafting a project brief with corporate sponsors to help student projects start from a stronger position.