generative-thinking

# Generative Thinking — One Move, Committed

Fixation is the default state. When a generator (human or LLM) has been working on a problem, attention concentrates on the current framing and subsequent ideas tend to be local variations on it. This skill is the interrupt: spend one move stepping sideways, then resume.

The discipline matters more than the move. Pick ONE technique per invocation, run it without second-guessing, and produce explicit reframings or candidate entry points — not a brainstorm list in the same frame.

## When to reach for this

Claude activates this skill when:
- The last 2+ iterations are variations of one idea (fixation signal)
- The user says "widen this", "think bigger", "I'm stuck", "what am I missing", "too narrow", "break out of"
- A problem is framed as a binary ("X or Y") and neither option is good
- An agent loop is producing convergent variations — suspect the frame, not the search depth
- The user explicitly wants a pre-mortem on the *framing* (not the plan) before committing

Do NOT activate this skill as a default before every consequential task — fixation is the trigger, not stakes. If the current frame is working, let it work.

## Core discipline

Three rules that apply across every move below. Violations make the output ideation-flavored but structurally identical to what came before.

1. **Generation before evaluation.** De Bono's core distinction: lateral thinking cares about *movement value*, not truth value. A provocation is not a proposal. Evaluate only after the move has produced 3+ candidate framings.
2. **One move, committed.** Do not rotate through five techniques as a menu. Pick the move that matches the diagnosis, execute it fully, surface what shook loose, then stop. Menus produce noise; commitment produces distance.
3. **Output framings, not ideas.** The deliverable of a generative move is usually *a new statement of the problem* or *a new entry angle*, not another solution candidate inside the old frame. If the output could have been produced without the move, the move didn't fire.

**Stop condition.** Stop when the move has produced 3+ non-trivial framings, or a single framing that reorganizes the problem (one sharp surprise beats five adjacent). Do not keep generating because the list looks short — volume is not the product.

**The fire test.** After every move, ask: *could this output have been produced without the move?* If yes, the move did not fire. Either commit harder (push the provocation further, make the reframe more aggressive, re-roll the random word, invert on a different axis) or the move was mismatched to the stuck-pattern — re-diagnose and pick the better-matched move. Re-diagnosis after a miss is not menu-rotation; menu-rotation is cycling through techniques without commitment. One move at a time, each one fully, and if it misses, diagnose why before the next.

## Diagnostic → Move

Match the stuck-pattern to the move. When unsure, default to **Reframe**.

| If the stuck-pattern is… | Reach for… |
|---|---|
| Framing feels forced ("must be X or Y") | **Reframe** — change the verb, subject, scope, or level |
| Generator keeps returning near-duplicates | **Random stimulus** — force an unrelated concept into the frame |
| Obvious answer is wrong but you can't see past it | **Provocation (Po)** — state something impossible, extract movement |
| Iterating on an existing artifact | **SCAMPER** — seven structured transforms |
| Stuck on "how do we make X succeed?" | **Inversion** — ask "how do we guarantee X fails?" then negate |
| Problem is defined entirely in one domain's vocabulary | **Perspective shift** — how would [distant domain] solve this? |
| Every solution is blocked by a constraint | **Constraint play** — remove it ("assume magic"), or add an absurd one ("must fit in a tweet") |

### Reframe
The problem-as-stated is rarely the problem-to-solve. Mutate the sentence:
- Change the **verb**: "reduce X" → "redistribute X", "time-shift X", "prevent X from mattering"
- Change the **subject**: "our team can't ship faster" → "reviewers are the bottleneck" → "the artifact is too reviewable"
- Change the **scope**: zoom out (whose problem is this upstream?) or zoom in (which one user, which one minute?)
- Change the **frame**: from "problem to fix" to "signal to interpret"

Produce 3 reframings. **Fired if**: at least one makes the original statement sound naive, or shifts who owns the problem.

### Provocation (Po)
Edward de Bono's method. Prefix a deliberately wrong, impossible, or absurd statement with `Po:` to signal it is not a proposal — it is a stimulus. Then extract movement: what principle, consequence, or adjacent idea does this surface?

Four recipes (de Bono's formal provocations):
- **Escape**: remove an essential feature. *Po: the database has no writes.*
- **Reversal**: flip the causal direction. *Po: users pay us to NOT use the product.*
- **Exaggeration**: push a quantity to the absurd limit. *Po: onboarding takes six months.*
- **Wishful thinking**: assume impossible capability. *Po: we know what the user will click next week.*

The canonical example: a factory pollutes a river. *Po: the factory is downstream of itself.* Impossible, but it generates: move intake downstream of discharge. Internal incentive to not pollute. Closed-loop water. The provocation is discarded; the movement stays.

**Fired if**: the provocation is genuinely impossible or absurd (not merely edgy), AND extracting movement yields a principle that survives translation back to the real constraints. If the "provocation" is a thing you could actually do, it's a proposal, not a Po — push it further.

### Random stimulus
Pick a word, object, or domain with no connection to the problem. Force a connection. The forced-feel is the point — it routes around the habituated pathway.

Template: *"How is [problem] like [random]?"* then *"What does that suggest?"*

**Sourcing for humans**: a random Wikipedia article, a nearby physical object, an O