What marks the beginning of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline?

According to the SAFe DevOps Practitioner 6.0 study guide1, the Continuous Delivery Pipeline (CDP)

represents the workflows, activities, and automation needed to guide new functionality from

ideation to an on-demand release of value. The CDP consists of four aspects: Continuous Exploration

(CE), Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Deployment (CD), and Release on Demand. The CDP

enables organizations to deliver new functionality to users far more frequently than traditional

processes. The first step in the CDP is Continuous Exploration, which focuses on creating alignment

on what needs to be built. In CE, design thinking ensures the enterprise understands the market

problem or customer need and the solution required to meet that need. It starts with a hypothesis of

something that will provide value to customers. Therefore, an idea marks the beginning of the CDP in

CE.