Scamper

SCAMPER is a creative-thinking technique for stimulating idea generation by systematically examining an existing idea, product, or concept through seven distinct prompts and transforming it into new, improved versions — particularly useful when starting from something already existing, unlike a blank-page technique such as Brainstorming.

The seven prompts

• Substitute — can a part be replaced with something else? What could be swapped to bring a fresh perspective?
• Combine — can different elements or ideas be merged into something new or synergistic?
• Adapt — can the idea be adjusted to fit a different context or purpose? What existing solutions elsewhere could be borrowed from?
• Modify — can it be altered — changed, enhanced, or adjusted — to improve function, appearance, or performance?
• Put to another use — could it serve an entirely different purpose or context than originally intended?
• Eliminate — can something be removed to simplify or streamline it?
• Reverse — can a traditional assumption be flipped? What does the idea look like considered from the opposite direction?

How to use it

Apply each of the seven prompts to an existing idea in turn, treating each as a genuine question to answer rather than skipping past ones that don't obviously apply — sometimes a prompt that seems irrelevant at first glance ("what would I eliminate from this already-lean design?") produces the most surprising result specifically because it wasn't the obvious one to try.

Where it fits among creative-thinking techniques

SCAMPER's structured, checklist-based approach makes it well suited to iterating on an existing concept methodically, in contrast to open-ended techniques like Brainstorming (best from a blank slate) or Oblique Strategies (best when a fresh, oblique nudge is needed rather than a systematic pass).

Common pitfalls

• Skipping prompts that seem obviously inapplicable — some of SCAMPER's most valuable results come from forcing an answer to a prompt that didn't seem to apply at first.
• Judging each generated variation immediately — SCAMPER is still a divergent-thinking technique; apply Ideation's suspend-judgment discipline while generating variations, and evaluate them as a separate, later step.
• Using SCAMPER on a blank-slate problem with nothing existing to iterate on — it's specifically a technique for transforming something that already exists; for a genuinely new problem, Brainstorming or mind mapping (see Mind Map) fit better.

Learn more

• Creative Thinking for the broader technique family SCAMPER belongs to.
• Brainstorming for the complementary blank-slate technique.