Roy Blumenthal's Creativity Tips and Tricks: SCAMPER -- a Tool to Transform Ideas

SCAMPER

A Tool To Transform Ideas

This tool comes from THINKERTOYS by Michael Michalko. (If you don't own this book, buy it immediately. It's the ONE essential creativity book for your shelf.)

When you've collected a bunch of ideas, or you're busy originating, this tool will help you create connections where you didn't have any before.

Apply liberally.

It's an acronym. The letters stand for:

S: Substitute, Simplify
C: Combine
A: Adapt
M: Modify, Magnify, Minify
P: Put to other uses
E: Eliminate
R: Reverse, Rearrange

Whatever the idea is you're working with, choose one of the letters and mangle the idea.

For instance, if your goal is to find a way to convert a building into a marketing opportunity, one of the ideas you might have come up with is, 'make it into a billboard'.

If we 'eliminate', we can remove the words from the 'billboard' idea, leaving behind a piece of art. A huge artwork.

If we 'put to other uses', we might get a building with context-sensitive information on it. A signboard of sorts.

And so on. You're limited by your own willingness to scrunch things around.