The teams working on the development of a new product or a service may often find themselves stuck in a rut, facing lingering problems they can’t solve and lacking new and original ideas. As fresh ideas and innovative concepts are essential for the product’s success on the market, this lack of creative inspiration may not only slow down the development process but result in a failure to accomplish set goals for the product
and meet customers’ needs.
So, for the project to move forward and for the product and the company to stand out among the competitors, some sort of creative spark is necessary. However, this is easier said than done, especially when it needs to be done on a regular and when the focus is on upgrading an already existing product.
In addition, innovation usually only breaks in difficult situations, when you’ve already hit a dead end. Therefore, finding a solution that will help you get unstuck and replace outdated and stagnant ideas with new, refreshing, and crisp approaches is the key to the overall product and organisational success.
In these cases, many organisations resort to various brainstorming methods to shake things up. Among those, the SCAMPER technique is certainly one of the easiest, most effective, and most direct techniques.
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What is SCAMPER Technique ?
The SCAMPER technique is a creative brainstorming method that allows teams to approach problems from different viewpoints. It encourages people to think differently, explore ideas, and find new perspectives on certain issues or opportunities. This method is a great way to spark creativity among team members, inspire smart decision-making, and uncover the potential of the whole team.
The technique works as a facilitating tool for generating new ideas and problem-solving processes through seven different types of prompts. The name of the method itself, SCAMPER, is an acronym for these seven prompts: Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify/Magnify, Put to another use (Purpose), Eliminate, and Reverse/Rearrange.
This technique is based on the belief that everything new we create is, in some way, an alternation of something that already exists. These seven steps guide the team and help them understand how they can innovate and upgrade the existing products or services. Each of them serves to provoke or spark conversation and exchange of ideas that will ultimately lead to a better product and customer satisfaction.
By going through these prompts, team members get a chance to observe a particular idea or problem through seven different lenses and, by doing so, discover ways to improve the current situation. The seven letters represent the seven ways to play around with product features and find out if they can be changed for the better.
While very quick and simple to put to work, the SCAMPER technique is a very powerful way to deal with any issues that may arise during the product development process. When used properly, it’s highly effective in moving brainstorming sessions in the direction that will result in the most optimal solutions and the best possible use of organisational resources.
What are the Seven Steps of the SCAMPER Technique?
As explained above, the SCAMPER technique features seven different steps, and each of them prompts questions that help teams come up with new and innovative ideas for improving current products and developing new ones. Teams implementing the SCAMPER technique don’t necessarily have to go through all seven steps and can freely jump from one to another.
Substitute
The Substitute stage of the SCAMPER technique focuses on exploring whether a part of the process, product, service, or solution can be replaced with another. The development process often gets stuck due to reluctance to substitute a certain part with another, more optimal one.
Almost every process or product has some components that are unnecessary or can be replaced with more efficient substitutes. So, the result of decisions revolving around substitutions should be replacing a current, inefficient part with a more fruitful alternative.
To do so, participants in the discussion must first break down a complete item into different parts, such as steps in the process or product features. Then, each of these parts should go through a trial-and-error process where one is replaced with another until the optimal solution is reached.
Combine
The goal of using the Combine technique is to analyse the potential benefits of merging two different ideas, product features, or process stages into a single, more optimal output. This often helps in cases where many elements of a product or a service are scattered, causing design flaws or issues.
Some of these ideas can be rather innovative, but not used to their full potential in the current product or service design. Combining them can result in a breakthrough product or a new technology that can significantly improve an organisation’s position in the market.
A great example of combining two different concepts into one more successful is combining a camera with mobile phones, or, for that matter, integrating a number of different features into modern smartphones. Compared to the early models of mobile phones, modern devices with all these integrated features provide a significantly better user experience.
Adapt
The focus of the Adapt part of the SCAMPER technique is on getting a better result by adjusting or tweaking an existing product or service. Often, the solution too many problems is readily available in the immediate environment, and all it takes adapting an idea to these solutions to create a better output. Plenty of the most successful and innovative ideas have come as a result of adjusting the ones that were already in existence.
Depending on the product, service, or process in question, these adjustments can range from radical changing the whole project to minor tweaks to certain features of the product. An excellent example of this technique is Netflix’s pivot from the DVD rental business to an online streaming service which saved the company and made it one of the most successful organisations in the entertainment industry.
Modify / Magnify
Unlike the Adapt technique, which is mainly focused on taking a certain product or feature, the Modify step of the SCAMPER method involves implementing changes to the overall process. This change can often help teams find more innovative ways to solve problems or unclear previously underutilised resources and capabilities. Changing the quality of a process item or magnifying its certain aspects can often deliver more value and improve its value.
An existing problem can be, for instance, solved by magnifying a certain aspect and checking whether the new situation provides more value or better insight. By doing so, the team can identify which part of the process or which product feature carries the most significance. For example, an organisation may decide that it’s better to focus on and expand (magnify) the production of just one product.
Put to Another Use
Some problems can be solved by using the existing products or processes, but putting them to another use or finding them a new purpose. In many cases, there could be an idea or design within the organisation that has no use or practical application in the current situation, no matter how great it may seem. However, this doesn’t mean that the idea should be discarded all together. It may very well become useful when implemented by different means and in a different problem scope.
A certain product may perform better in another market, provide more benefits to users outside the target customer base, or create by-products that can be put to good use. Changing the original purpose of the product to fit the new circumstances or new markets can open up a slew of new opportunities.
Eliminate
In some processes, certain parts or stages can be rather useless. These elements are often just dead weight, and removing them can streamline the entire process and make it more efficient. They also may provide the extra load that hinders the organisation’s capability to be innovative and creative. Eliminating such elements of the process allows for better allocation of resources within the organisation and fosters creativity necessary for the development of breakthrough projects.
Of course, the elimination can’t be arbitrary. The problem should be carefully considered, and the team should explore ways trimming the processes, ideas, or products will contribute to a better result. Only then, the organisation can narrow down the challenge caused by the problem and make finding the solution much easier.
Reverse / Rearrange
Changing the order of process steps can often lead to discovering previously unknown innovative potential. By reversing the process or rearranging the current status, the organisation can sometimes put itself in a position to provide a better output.
This is very helpful as the solution to the problem can often lie in the resources and solutions that already exist and all that’s needed is a rephrasing of the thinking process or rearranging of the modules of the production line.
In addition, reversing the way a product is developed or used, can provide a different perspective and uncover new paths to problem solutions. McDonald’s is one of the companies that have used this technique with much success. Instead of having customers finish the meal and wait for the check, they made the whole customer serving process much faster and more efficient by having them pay first and then eat their food.