Creative Techniques: SCAMPER

In his book Applied Imagination (1953), Alex Osborn outlined a series of challenge questions about a product or service to stimulate possible solutions, insights, perspectives or directions.  The questions were grouped around a common active verb – such as Substitute or Adapt – so it was named the Osborn Verbal Checklist.

In the early 1990s, Bob Eberle, an author of books to increase creativity in children, simplified the original nine groups of questions into the clever anagram SCAMPER.

How To Use It

To begin the exercise, state the problem that is preventing the objective or outcome from being achieved.

Next, select any of the seven areas, and post questions to yourself or to a team (like a brainstorm) to challenge your thinking, inspire a new direction, and shape new ideas.

Here’s the original seven SCAMPER groups of questions.

S - Substitute  What else?  Who else?  Other people or roles?  What other components, attributes, elements?  Other materials or ingredients?  Other approaches or steps?  Other places?  Other tone of voice or positioning?  

C - Combine  Blending elements, assemblies or services? Combine ideas or purposes?  Merge units?  Forge a new ensemble or assortment?  A new alloy?

A - Adapt Change its function?  What else is this like?  What other idea does this suggest?  What could I copy from someone else?  Whom could I emulate?  Does the past offer a parallel to the future?  Is there a new twist?

M - Modify as in Maximize  What can I add?  More time?  Frequency?  Can I make it stronger or faster?  Longer, thicker, more value?  Can I exaggerate it?  Duplicate it?  Multiply it?

Or, Modify as in Minimize  What I reduce?  Can I condense it?  Make it lower, shorter, lighter? Split-up or make understated?  Can I change meaning, color, motion, sound, odor, form or shape?

P - Put to other uses  What new use does this have?  If modified, what else will it do?  If I put it in a new environment, industry, country, how would they use it?  If I changed audiences, what would they do it with?

E - Eliminate  What can I streamline, omit or edit?  What can be removed to make something entirely new, or just slightly different?  What can I neutralize?  What can be simplified?  If reduced to its essential function, what’s left?

R - Rearrange  Can I interchange components?  Can I re-order or reverse?  How can I make them opposites?  Turn the tables?  Transpose cause and effect?  Turn it inside out, upside down, right-side up?

Example

Here’s a simple example of how SCAMPER might be used.

A friend of a friend of a friend in Sydney was opening up a bakery, and she offered me a free cupcake and coffee for an hour of brainstorming new flavours, types or styles of cupcakes to expand her business.  (Brainstorming and dessert.  Who could refuse?)

Here’s some of the ideas we brainstormed, using SCAMPER.

Substitute  Could she substitute the culture for a different one?  Thai cupcakes?  Greek cupcakes?  Could she change the shape of the cupcakes?  Triangles?  Squares?  (“Cupsquakes”?)

Combine   Could she combine dessert with an appetizer?  Make the cupcakes savory, not sweet?  Could she make a recipe where the cupcakes could be suitable for salads?  Could she add alcohol or liquor?  Could she make a cupcake which was perfect for beer?

Adapt  Could she sell or cross-promote them at the stores along the main street (especially to establish visibility as she was in a laneway, as well as drive traffic).  For example, you’d get a free cupcake with a $50 dry cleaning bill.  Can she make a mobile cupcake stand, set-up outside of a local college, the local train stop, or the nearby movie theatre?

Modify   Could she make tall cupcakes?  Or really tiny cupcakes (made in thimbles)?  Or the largest cupcake ever made in Australia?

Put to another use  There was a big dog park two blocks away.  Could she make canine cupcakes?  Could she make cupcakes to replace dinner rolls?  Or to eat at breakfast?

Eliminate  Could she drop the calories?  Make them flourless?  Frosting-less?  Paper-less?

Reverse  Could she make upside-down cupcakes?  Can you make inside-out cupcake, with the filling on the outside and the cake on the inside?  Could she make cupcakes with the frosting on the inside?

SCAMPER is one of the most flexible and useful brainstorming tools.  In the next few days, I’ll add some additional questions for each letter as additional help and support.  Go here.

As always, let me know how you've used the exercise, or if you have any questions. Good luck!

Comments

[JIM CLARK]

Andy. SCAMPER has been a central challenge in the creative thinking class I've taught for over 20 years.
About 6 years ago, I included another challenge that's connected to the "original seven." Apply SCAMPER to SCAMPER. (Which is where SIMPLIFY emerges).
I've had students do the original 7. And then...apply SCAMPER to SCAMPER. The results have been incredibly amazing. Just thought I'd pass that on.

[Andy Eklund]

What a brilliant thought, thank you. Just to clarify: use SCAMPER to come up with the original set of potential ideas based on the theme or problem, then apply SCAMPER a second time, to each individual idea (or ideas) to expand and drill down even further. Please, correct me if I'm wrong. Your great suggestion reminds me of the Lotus Blossom, another creative tool I'm going to feature in a few days. Jim, many thanks again for the suggestion.