Before pitching a project, there's shaping it.

Before shaping it, there's this really hard work where you struggle to define the problem or the opportunity.

Need a word for that. It's not fluffy brainstorming / ideation.

More like "forging." Hard work, concentration, heat.

The "forging" step (whatever we call it...) is the most uphill of the uphill work.

It's trying to understand what's not working. Or why customers do something we don't understand.

It's where demand-side research happens.

Research isn't something soft and exploratory we do when we're bored or curious.

It's something expensive and intense we do when we don't understand something, and we're willing to make the hard trade-off to spend time learning about it.