scamper
SCAMPER
What this technique does
Take one existing thing — a feature, a product, a workflow — and push it through seven transformation lenses in fixed order. Each lens asks a different question: what could you swap out, what could you fuse it with, what could you borrow, what could you exaggerate or shrink, what else it could do, what could you cut, what could you flip. The value is coverage: the checklist forces you past the two or three variations you would have thought of unaided and into the ones you would have skipped. It is a divergent tool for an idea that already exists, not a way to invent one from nothing.
Source: Bob Eberle, SCAMPER: Games for Imagination Development (1971), building on Alex Osborn's checklist of idea-spurring questions.
Workflow
Step 1: Confirm the target
A valid target is an existing idea, artifact, or process: a shipped feature, a signup flow, a pricing model, a ritual your team runs. SCAMPER transforms something that already works; it cannot operate on a blank page. If the user brings no starting idea — "help me think of a product" — refuse and point them to a generative technique (a random-stimulus or free-association method) that manufactures ideas from nothing. This one needs raw material.
If the target is unclear, ask one focused question — "What's the existing idea, and what part of it is fixed versus open to change?" — then proceed.
Refuse requests to perform analytical work — "debug this", "review this code", "implement this change" — and suggest an analytical approach instead. But redesigning or reinventing such a process is a valid creative target: "reinvent our code-review ritual" is in scope; "review this PR" is not.