Structured Brainstorming

The Separation Principle, Foundational Rule

Generation and evaluation CANNOT happen simultaneously. Osborn (1953): "You cannot get hot and cold water from the same faucet at the same time, you only get tepid water."

Consequence for the agent: All options must be generated before any option is scored. Never filter or rank during generation. Self-censorship during generation degrades both the quality of ideas and the quality of evaluation.

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Phase 1: HMW Framing, Set Up the Ideation Space

Before generating any options, reframe the problem as a "How Might We" question.

Rules for valid HMW questions:

• No embedded solutions: "How might we make onboarding faster?" ✓ vs "How might we add tooltips?" ✗
• Outcome-oriented, not feature-oriented
• Broad enough for genuinely different approaches
• Positive framing (not "How might we avoid X?")

Example transformation:

• Feature request: "Add a dashboard to show workflow status"
• Bad HMW: "How might we build a better dashboard?"
• Good HMW: "How might we give teams confidence that their workflow is progressing correctly?"

The good HMW opens the solution space: the answer isn't necessarily a dashboard.

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Phase 2: SCAMPER, 7 Structurally Different Lenses

Apply each SCAMPER lens to the validated job to generate one option per letter. This guarantees structural diversity, each letter produces a categorically different type of option.