SCAMPER Your Creativity

Taking action is the key to increasing your creativity. But how, you ask?

Creativity is simply connecting two unrelated elements together and SCAMPER is one of the best tools to stimulate this way thinking. Robert Eberle played with Alex Osborn's list (Osborn is the marketing guru who invented "brainstorming") and developed SCAMPER, an acronym for seven active verbs to trigger ideas. Here's how creativity consultant David Straker explains them:

Substitute What can you substitute? What can be used instead? Who else instead? What other ingredients? Other materials? Other processes? Other powers? Other places? Other approaches?

• Instead of _____ I can _____.

• I can bring together _____ and _____ to _____.

• I can adapt _____ in this way _____ to _____.

• I can modify _____ in this way _____ to _____.

• I can re-use _____ in this way _____ by _____.

• I can eliminate _____ by _____.

• I can rearrange _____ like this _____ so that _____.

As they are all verbs, they are about doing, and so get to it!