Innovation does not begin with brainstorming. Innovation begins much earlier.

Over the last few months, we have gone through the stages that lay the groundwork for innovation based on systematic surveillance: defining clear objectives, selecting the right information sources, identifying strategic keywords and detecting the signs that indicate opportunities and risks. This information is then passed on to experts, who validate, interpret and distribute it to the people who can make sense of it.

All of this machinery has one purpose: to fuel the most transformative phase of the process, ideation.

Ideation: where everything makes sense

The ideation phase is not an improvised space for aimless creativity. Quite the contrary. It is the moment when the organisation transforms strategic information into value propositions. To do this, at InTool we rely on a structured methodology that is reflected in our tool Itdea.

The ideation team plays an essential role in this process and is responsible for:

1. Propose ideas based on strategic information identified during surveillance, but also drawing on the experience or intuition of its members.
2. Enrich ideas collectively, contributing diverse points of view, connecting similar ideas and questioning assumptions.
3. Prioritise judiciously, using predefined parameters to select those initiatives with the greatest strategic potential.
4. Analyse and develop, so that ideas do not remain on paper, but are transformed into real and actionable initiatives.

Ideation is, therefore, the bridge that transforms the surveillance and intelligence process into a creative process and then into innovation, generating initiatives that add real value and open up new opportunities for the organisation.