SCAMPER
Idea-generation prompts: Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to other use, Eliminate, Reverse.
SCAMPER is a checklist-based ideation technique that prompts systematic exploration of an existing product, service, or process by asking what could be Substituted, Combined, Adapted, Modified (or Magnified/Minimized), Put to other use, Eliminated, or Reversed (or Rearranged). The mnemonic was coined by Bob Eberle in his 1971 book Scamper: Games for Imagination Development as an adaptation of Alex Osborn's earlier Idea-Spurring Questions checklist from Applied Imagination (1953), which had been the foundational text in the Creative Problem Solving (CPS) movement. SCAMPER's strength is forcing systematic coverage of a wide range of transformation operations rather than relying on free-association brainstorming. The technique is widely used in design, product development, and creativity training as a structured complement to free-form ideation.
Core components
- S — Substitute
- C — Combine
- A — Adapt
- M — Modify (or Magnify/Minimize)
- P — Put to other use
- E — Eliminate
- R — Reverse (or Rearrange)
- Systematic checklist application
- Generative rather than evaluative
- Adapted from Osborn's Idea-Spurring Questions
Primary use case
Product and service design ideation; creativity training; structured brainstorming for incremental innovation; teaching tool in elementary and corporate creativity programs.
Common criticisms
- Checklist application can produce volume of ideas without quality discrimination
- biased toward incremental modification rather than radical reconception
- categories overlap (Adapt and Modify, Combine and Rearrange)
- works better for tangible product modifications than for service or strategy ideation
- doesn't address evaluation or selection of generated ideas
- can become formulaic and lose generative power with repeated use on the same problem
- less useful when the underlying problem is poorly defined.
Lineage
- Siblings
- Lateral Thinking, Six Thinking Hats, Mind Mapping