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Thinking models in practice: SCAMPER

· 4 min read
The MindMax team
The MindMax team
Building MindMax

SCAMPER is a checklist of seven prompts for improving an existing idea, product or process: Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, Reverse. You run the idea through each prompt in turn and write down what it suggests. It works because it forces you past the two or three moves you would make anyway.

Part of Thinking models in practice, a short series on classic methods and how to run them on your own material.

Where it comes from​

SCAMPER was arranged by Bob Eberle in the early 1970s from an earlier checklist of idea-spurring questions by Alex Osborn, the advertising executive who also popularised brainstorming. Its staying power comes from being a checklist: it does not ask you to be creative, it asks you seven specific questions.

When to use it​

SCAMPER is for an idea that exists and is not good enough yet — a product feature, a workshop format, a lesson plan, a process. It is the wrong tool for a blank page; for that, brainstorm first and then SCAMPER the version you like.

The seven questions​

  • Substitute — what component, material, person or step could be swapped for another?
  • Combine — what could be merged with something else, including another of your own ideas?
  • Adapt — what has solved a similar problem elsewhere, and what would it look like here?
  • Modify (or magnify/minify) — what could be bigger, smaller, more frequent, rarer?
  • Put to another use — who else could use this, or for what else?
  • Eliminate — what could be removed entirely without losing the point?
  • Reverse (or rearrange) — what if the order, the roles or the direction were flipped?

A worked example​

Idea: a monthly one-hour internal talk where one team presents its work to the company. Attendance is falling.

  • Substitute: replace the presenter with a demo by a user of that team's work.
  • Combine: merge it with the onboarding programme, so new hires attend as part of their first month.
  • Adapt: borrow the conference "lightning talk" format — five teams, ten minutes each.
  • Modify: make it shorter and more frequent: twenty minutes, every two weeks.
  • Put to another use: record it and use the recordings as documentation.
  • Eliminate: drop the slides; show the actual product or the actual spreadsheet.
  • Reverse: the audience brings questions in advance, and the team answers only those.

Not all seven are good. Three are worth trying, and two of them — lightning format and questions in advance — combine well. That is a normal SCAMPER outcome: seven prompts, a shortlist of two or three.

Running it with AI​

SCAMPER is close to ideal for AI: the questions are fixed, the work is generative, and you judge the results. The trap is generic output — "use AI to personalise it" under every heading. Give it the real idea with its real constraints, and ask for specific, testable variations.

In MindMax, SCAMPER is one of the built-in "diverge" skills on the canvas, and it keeps its shape: it always comes back as seven branches, one per question. Apply it to the version of the idea you like after a brainstorm, cross-breed the parts that survive, then distil a shortlist you picked yourself.

Where it goes wrong​

  • Treating all seven as equally valid. Most will be weak. The value is in the one or two you would not have reached otherwise.
  • Using it on a blank page. There is nothing to substitute or eliminate yet.
  • Stopping at the list. An idea from SCAMPER is a hypothesis. Pick one and test the smallest version.

Part of thinking models on the canvas. Previous: first principles. Next: six thinking hats.