What is it?
If you engage a number of global (citizen) scouts, you aim to identify new trends that are not already publicly available in reports. You engage them to spot interesting single, context-specific, precise signs of change, called signals in the foresight pyramid.
After the collection, it is required to muddle through all the incoming signals and unravel the insights that emerge across the variety of signals. With the ITONICS Tag Cloud, you have the right tool at hand to identify such patterns and identify new drivers/trends which you can act upon as a first-mover.
How does it work?
First, you need to advise your scouts that they need to add tags while entering their content elements. Tags are restriction-free keywords, i.e., the tagging is not restricted to a list of options but can be added individually. Every user has thus the option to categorize their content elements with the labels they want.
The tags are displayed on the detail page of a content element in the right-side bar. The application also offers the possibility to find recommended tags based on the textual descriptions via the button 'find more relevant tags'.
To now explore commonalities among the content added, navigate to the Tag Cloud from the main navigation menu.
After navigating to the tag cloud, all tags used across all content elements (that you have access to) are displayed. If you want to further analyze which content sits behind the tags, you just need to click on a tag. Once clicked, the tag cloud adjusts to the tag selected and displays now all the tags that are used in combination with this tag. The tag moves into the center of the tag cloud and is put into an active filter.
Furthermore, you will find all the content elements on which the tag has been used below the tag cloud. From here, you can use the bulk actions or just dive into the details of a content element by clicking on its title or abstract.
You can also use the Search option or various Filters to specify the view of your Tag cloud.
To create now a new trend/driver based on a collection of signals, filter the tag cloud for a respective tag by clicking on the tag displayed. Hit the create button in the top navigation menu, select the right content category, describe it, and add the relations to the content elements filtered in the Tag Cloud.