Judging criteria polarity explained

Polarity tells the platform which direction is "good" for a given criterion. For a criterion like Innovation Potential, a higher score is better — that's positive polarity. For a criterion like Cost or Risk, a lower score is actually better — that's negative polarity, and the platform inverts it when combining scores so a submission isn't penalized for scoring well on something that's supposed to be low. As a judge, you always score using the same scale regardless of polarity — just rate what you see. Polarity is a challenge-configuration setting, not something you need to adjust for while scoring.