Alex Faickney Osborn, an advertising executive who co-founded the BBDO agency, published his "How to Think Up" method in 1942 in his book "How to Think Up." Osborn was frustrated that brainstorming sessions — which he also popularized — lacked structure. People came to meetings, offered obvious ideas, then congratulated themselves on a productive session. To combat this, Osborn developed a systematic checklist that forced thinkers to interrogate existing products, services, or processes from multiple angles.
Osborn's original checklist contained these seven prompts: Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to other uses, Eliminate, Reverse. The acronym SCAMPER was coined later, likely by someone teaching Osborn's method — but it stuck because it works as a memory device. The questions are deceptively simple, which is part of their power: they lower the activation energy for creative thinking by providing specific directions for inquiry.
The Seven Questions
S — Substitute
What can you substitute? This question targets every element of a product, service, or process and asks whether a different version, material, person, or approach would improve the outcome.
Examples: Substitute a human customer service representative with an AI chatbot. Substitute the location of a feature (moving the camera from the back to the front of a phone, as Apple did with the iPhone 4). Substitute sugar with stevia in a beverage formulation. Substitute a physical gift card with a digital code delivered via email.
Prompt questions: What other ingredient, material, process, person, or approach could replace this? What would happen if we used a different vendor, supplier, or technology? Where in the value chain could we introduce alternatives?
C — Combine
What can you combine? This question asks whether merging two or more elements — features, functions, products, or services — could create something new and valuable.
Examples: Combining a phone with a camera created the camera phone, which later disrupted both the photography and mobile phone industries. Combining a printer with a scanner with a fax machine created the all-in-one office device. Combining a credit card with an identity verification chip created contactless payment cards.
Prompt questions: What features or functions could be bundled? What unexpected pairing might create a new category? Could we combine target audiences? Could we combine our supply chain with a competitor's?
A — Adapt
How can you adapt? This question borrows solutions from one context and applies them to another. It's the cornerstone of analogical thinking and cross-pollination between industries.
Examples: The Japanese bullet train's nose cone was adapted from the Kingfisher bird's beak to reduce tunnel boom noise. Military drone technology was adapted for agricultural crop monitoring. The queue management system used in Disney theme parks was adapted from hospital emergency room management software.
Prompt questions: What has worked in another industry that we could apply here? What approach from a different context might solve our problem? What can we learn from how other companies solved analogous challenges?
M — Modify
What can you modify? This question asks about magnifying, minifying, or altering specific aspects of the product or service — shape, size, color, speed, frequency, or other attributes.
Examples: IKEA modified the traditional furniture business model by requiring customer self-assembly, reducing storage and shipping costs, and passing the savings on. Spotify modified the music ownership model into a subscription streaming model. Nespresso modified the home coffee experience by introducing portioned capsules with bar-grade pressure.
Prompt questions: What would happen if we made it bigger/smaller/faster/slower? How would changing the frequency of use change the value? What if we changed the user interface? What if we changed the emotional tone of the product experience?
P — Put to other uses
What else can this be used for? This question challenges the original purpose of an object or service and asks whether there are untapped applications.
Examples:Post-it Notes emerged from a failed adhesive (see lateral thinking article). Botox was developed as an eye muscle treatment; its "other use" — smoothing wrinkles — became its dominant market. Netflix originally mailed DVDs; streaming video was a "put to other uses" pivot that transformed the entire entertainment industry.
Prompt questions: Who else might use this product, and for what? Could this technology serve a different market? Could we serve a different need in the same market? What else does this solve for besides the original problem?
E — Eliminate
What can you remove? This question targets unnecessary complexity — features that add cost without proportionate value, steps in a process that don't contribute to the outcome, or layers of organization that slow decision-making.
Examples: Ryanair eliminated almost everything that traditional airlines included in ticket prices — assigned seating, meals, free baggage — and offered only the core transportation. The original iPhone eliminated the physical keyboard, stylus, and removable battery that all competitors included. Amazon's original Kindle eliminated the physical book-buying experience at airport bookstores by making e-books available anywhere.
Prompt questions: What features do fewer than 20% of users actually use? What steps in this process could we remove without degrading the outcome? What could we offer at a lower price point by removing features our target customer doesn't value?
R — Reverse
What can you reverse or rearrange? This question applies inversion — doing the opposite of what convention suggests — to surface hidden assumptions.
Examples: Amazon reversed the traditional retail model by offering free shipping on large orders, funded initially by the convenience fee on small orders. YouTube reversed the television production model by letting anyone upload video content for free. The reverse vending machine (deposit-refund for bottles) reversed the typical consumption loop by making return profitable.
Prompt questions: What if we did this in the opposite order? What if the customer was the supplier? What if we charged differently — subscription vs. one-time, free vs. paid? What assumption are we making that inversion would challenge?
Case Study: IKEA's Systematic Use of SCAMPER
Applying the Checklist to Flat-Pack Furniture
Ingvar Kamprad, IKEA's founder, built the company's competitive advantage through relentless application of SCAMPER principles. The flat-pack furniture model exemplifies multiple SCAMPER dimensions simultaneously:
Substitute: IKEA substituted professional furniture assembly (expensive, slow) with customer self-assembly (lower cost, faster delivery). They also substituted expensive solid wood frames with engineered wood boards.
Combine: They combined the showroom model (see furniture before purchasing) with the warehouse model (pick up goods yourself) in a single building format.
Modify: They modified the product dimensions to maximize container shipping efficiency — standard widths, heights that stack optimally.
Eliminate: They eliminated the traditional furniture store's white-glove delivery and assembly services, passing savings to customers. They also eliminated exclusive geographic distribution by selling directly to consumers.
Reverse: IKEA reversed the showroom-to-warehouse flow: customers walk through a showroom (experiencing the furniture), then go to a warehouse (self-pickup), then assemble at home. Traditional furniture stores did the opposite — warehouse then delivery.
IKEA's model generated over €47 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2023. The flat-pack innovation didn't come from a single SCAMPER session — it emerged from continuous interrogation of each assumption in the furniture value chain using these seven questions.
Modern Adaptations: Beyond SCAMPER
Contemporary thinkers have extended Osborn's framework in several directions:
BOOSTED SCAMPER (sometimes used in design thinking workshops) adds a "B" for "Benchmark" — compare your approach against industry leaders. Some add "S" for "Scratch/Create" — what new could we build from scratch?
SCAMPER + Jobs-to-be-Done: A more modern adaptation combines SCAMPER with Clayton Christensen's Jobs-to-be-Done framework. Instead of asking "how can we improve this product?" the SCAMPER questions are applied to the underlying job the customer is trying to get done. This prevents the common failure of improving product features that don't matter to the customer.
Practical Process: Running a SCAMPER Workshop
1. Select a target — Choose a specific product, service, process, or feature to interrogate. Make it concrete. "Improve our customer onboarding process" is better than "be more innovative."
2. Assign each SCAMPER dimension — For a 60-minute session, allocate 7-8 minutes per dimension. Start with Eliminate and Reverse — these are most likely to surface hidden assumptions that the other questions wouldn't touch.
3. Generate before evaluating — Apply the Osborn Rule from brainstorming: defer judgment. Every SCAMPER question should generate at least 5-7 responses before the team moves to evaluation.
4. Evaluate with criteria — After generating across all dimensions, evaluate using a simple scoring: feasibility (1-3), desirability to customer (1-3), and differentiation (1-3). Prioritize highest-scoring ideas for prototyping.