Use SCAMPER to come up with 7 new ideas

This technique gives us 7 ways to take an existing idea and produce 7 variations, potentially revealing a better approach.

This play works when:

• You can't move past an idea you're stuck on
• You need to consider other ways forward
• Before you go ahead with an idea, you want to check there aren't better ways of doing it first

How to Play

Step 1

This play relies on you already having an idea of how to approach a challenge you're facing. For the purposes of this guide, I'll use an example.

My challenge and idea:

I'm finding that I don't have time to regularly post on social media to market my business. I would like to enlist a friend, who runs a social media agency, to take this off my plate.

To follow along, think of an idea you've had in the last few weeks. What problem is it solving? Before you put it into action, put it through the SCAMPER process.

Step 2

We're gong to use the SCAMPER technique to remix our idea and come up with 7 variations.

SCAMPER stands for:

• Substitute - switch out part of the idea
• Combine - combine with a new idea
• Adapt - borrow an approach from elsewhere
• Modify - change part of the idea
• Put to another use - reuse existing resources
• Eliminate - remove part of the idea
• Rearrange - shuffle elements of the idea

We'll take our idea, and put it through each of these methods to come up with a new idea, and note down a brief pro and con of that idea compared to our original.

Here's how it went when I went through this with my idea:

• Substitute - Instead of using my friend's agency, I might consider an up-and-coming freelancer. Cheaper, but would require procurement time.
• Combine - Instead of relying solely on my friend, I could combine this with my own efforts. More collaborative, but requires more ongoing time from me.
• Adapt - When I don't have time to go to the gym, I try to reframe it as a treat I am lucky I get to do. Can I make myself excited to post so I prioritise it? A lasting solution, but requires a lot of behavioural change.
• Modify - Instead of offloading the posting because I don't have time, create more time to post instead. Keeps my posting authentically me, but sacrifices time in other areas.
• Put to another use - I already use Notion for organising my thoughts around content ideas, maybe I can use the Notion AI tools to help draft content plans to help save me time. Faster, but quality will likely suffer.
• Eliminate - What if I remove the ongoing element of content posting? Can I take a week off client work to produce 6 months' worth of content up front? Saves time/cost ongoing, but seems exhausting and quality might suffer.
• Rearrange - What if my friend comes up with the post ideas, but I write them? This provides an outside perspective for fresh ideas, but risks diluting the brand.

Step 3

Now, reflect on your ideas. Remember, the idea still has to address the original challenge!

Usually at this stage you'll know intuitively if you have come up with a better idea. You might have found yourself going "oh, interesting" while you wrote something down.

Even if you proceed with your original idea, at the very least, SCAMPER has made your thinking around the idea more nuanced and resilient. You are aware of more variables and can proceed with a bigger picture understanding.

After doing this exercise, I decided to go with the idea I landed on with the Combine approach - to pay my friend's agency for social media management, but do this in a collaborative way to keep budget manageable and maintain an authentic tone of voice across my marketing.