SCAMPER

Robert Eberle developed SCAMPER in the 1970s as a memorable way to prompt creative thinking, especially in education. He adapted a longer question checklist created by advertising executive Alex Osborn (1888–1996), whose work also popularised brainstorming. Osborn’s staff had assembled 83 idea-spurring questions; Eberle organised the essential moves into one mnemonic.

When to use it

• Use SCAMPER to generate alternatives or improve an existing product, service, process, control, experience or business model.
• Use it when a team is trapped by familiarity and needs systematic prompts before evaluating ideas.
• Apply it to a clearly defined object or problem; it is less useful when the challenge itself has not been understood.

Origins

SCAMPER was created by Illinois educational administrator Robert Eberle in the 1970s and published through his work on creative imagination. It builds on the checklist method of Alex Osborn (1888–1996). Osborn’s original collection contained 83 questions; Eberle compressed related transformations into the SCAMPER acronym so learners could recall and apply them easily.

What it is

Familiar systems often become invisible: people assume each element must remain because it has always been there. SCAMPER interrupts that assumption through seven transformation prompts:

• Substitute
• Combine
• Adapt
• Modify — including magnify and minify
• Put to another use
• Eliminate
• Reverse — including rearrange

The prompts generate possibilities; they do not validate customer value, safety, feasibility or economics. Evaluation comes afterwards.

How to use it

Choose one clearly bounded object—for example, a product—and describe its users, purpose, components, constraints and current performance. Then work through the prompts.

Substitute

Replace a component, material, role, channel or rule.

Ask what could perform the same function differently and what new trade-offs the substitution creates.

Combine

Join two elements, functions, offers or stages.

Look for combinations that remove a handoff, create complementary value or reuse one resource.

Adapt

Borrow or alter an idea for a new context.

Ask where a similar problem has already been solved and which principle can transfer without copying irrelevant features.

Modify

Change form, scale, emphasis, sequence or sensory quality.

Magnify what creates value, minify what creates friction and test whether the change affects the whole system.

Put to another use by identifying another user, job, market, channel or life-cycle stage in which the object’s capability has value.

Eliminate

Remove a part, step, rule, feature or assumption.

Determine whether removal simplifies the experience or exposes a dependency that needs redesign.

Reverse

Invert or rearrange roles, order, direction or ownership.

Explore what happens if the customer performs the supplier’s step, the sequence runs backwards or a constraint becomes a design principle.

Capture every idea without debating it immediately. Then cluster, combine and evaluate options against user need, strategic fit, feasibility, risk and evidence. Prototype the most promising concepts.