SCAMPER On Over For Some Creative Thinking

Some of you may have heard of the term SCAMPER in regards to creative thinking, while others just think I am talking about what happy little children do when they are playing. Either way, both can have a positive effect. So, some more of my learning from Buffalo State.

SCAMPER is actually an acronym developed from divergent thinking questions by Alex Osborn. Bob Eberle took those questions and categorized them and coined the acronym in his book Scamper: Creative Games and Activities for Imagination Development.

Check out the definition of the acronym:

Substitute
Combine
Adapt
Modify
Put to other uses
Eliminate
Rearrange

One of the best examples of a write up about SCAMPER was in Luciano Passuello's blog.
I loved his examples and the graphics he used. Excellent work. Since he did such an excellent job, I will not go too much in-depth, however, here are questions from each category one could potentially ask:

Substitute: What can you substitute?
Combine: What sort of ensemble could be used or created?
Adapt: What else is like this?
Modify: How about a new twist?
Put to Other Uses: What might other uses be, if changed?
Eliminate: What can do without?
Rearrange: What if you reversed it?

I have actually seen SCAMPER used to help develop a board game in relatively short time with a group of 6 people. It was, in a word, amazing. Let me know how this works out for you and let Luciano know what you think of his resource.

Happy Creativity!

~Jeffrey