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SCAMPER brainstorming: the seven operations, explained
SCAMPER brainstorming applies seven operations to your challenge: Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, Reverse. This page explains how to run each one. Brainstormer itself does not run SCAMPER: it takes a different route to the same goal, with six personas and a picked winner.
- What each of the seven letters actually asks you to do
- The prompt to say out loud for every operation
- Works on products, campaigns, processes and names
- What Brainstormer does instead, and when that suits you better
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Challenge:
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Why
Shortlist
Sample brainstorm shown. Your challenges stay private.
SCAMPER is a checklist, and that is its whole strength
SCAMPER works because it is mechanical: take the thing you are stuck on and force seven specific transformations on it. What can we substitute? What combines with what? What would we eliminate entirely? What does it look like reversed? The rigor is the point, and the rigor is also why solo brainstormers rarely finish a run: playing facilitator and idea machine at the same time is exhausting.
The seven prompts, in the order most people run them: Substitute one ingredient for another. Combine two things that do not usually travel together. Adapt something that works in a different industry. Modify by making one dimension much bigger or much smaller. Put it to another use for a customer you were not aiming at. Eliminate the step everybody assumes is required. Reverse the sequence or the assumption. For worked examples on each letter, read our SCAMPER technique guide.
Where SCAMPER runs out
SCAMPER mutates a thing you already have. That makes it excellent for a product, a process or a campaign that exists and needs to be different, and much weaker when the honest question is which direction to take at all, because there is nothing yet to substitute or eliminate.
It also has nothing to say about deciding. Seven columns of transformations leave you with more options than you started with and no mechanism for choosing between them, which is why so many SCAMPER sessions end in a photograph of a whiteboard. Pairing it with idea prioritization is what turns the exercise into a decision.
What Brainstormer does instead
To be direct: Brainstormer does not run SCAMPER, and there is no SCAMPER mode to switch on. It takes a different route to the same destination. You type the challenge and six standing personas answer it at once, the Optimist, the Skeptic, the Customer, the Engineer, the Marketer and the Visionary, which lands around twenty ideas that genuinely disagree with each other. Then it converges: a shortlist of the strongest, and one winner named with the reasoning written out.
Where SCAMPER forces variety by transformation, this forces it by point of view, and it carries on past the ideas into the decision that SCAMPER leaves to you. A free account runs 3 of these a month, and paid plans start at $16 per month with no cap.
Questions
What does SCAMPER stand for?
Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify (or Magnify), Put to another use, Eliminate, Reverse (or Rearrange). Each letter is a transformation you force on your challenge to produce a different kind of idea.
Does Brainstormer run SCAMPER for me?
No, and we would rather say so than sell you a mode that does not exist. Brainstormer runs its own method: six standing personas answer your challenge from six different angles, then it shortlists the strongest ideas and picks a winner with reasons. If you specifically want the seven SCAMPER columns, run them by hand from the prompts on this page, or use a whiteboard tool with a SCAMPER template.
From blank page to a decided direction
Plans from $16 per month. Unlimited brainstorms, nothing metered.