What is scamper and how it can enhance your thinking abilities

What is Scamper?

In the market or industry, the competition is constantly increasing. People are coming up with new things and interesting ideas that are giving them the status that they require. Are you the person who used to have a great standard in the industry but now your products are not giving that response in the market? Then you might be looking for some interesting method to get better in the market and understand what is scamper.

Scalper is a method that can help you in getting new ideas through some simple things. An idea is something that sometimes comes in your mind easily whole sometimes things start to get messed up. In both the situations, scamper can help you to innovate and improve your products in the market. Here we will discuss this efficient method of bringing innovation to your products and how you can implement it.

What is the meaning of scamper?

So, the word scamper is not any regular word. Each alphabet of scamper represents another discreet term that then refers to one or more steps that you will need to follow for bringing that necessary innovation. Here is what is scamper and each letter stand for.

1. Substitute.

2. Combine.

3. Adapt.

4. Modify.

5. Put to another use.

6. Eliminate.

7. Reverse.

Here are the meanings of each of these words that can be implemented in your business.

1. Substitute

As the word means to change, these terms also resemble the word change but it refers to some qualities of your product. It is not like you get up and change some of the characteristics of your product. Applying this required you to be sure that this will be revolutionary for your product. Here are some major factors that you need to look for in your product while applying the term substitute.

Problems:

The first thing to look for in your product is that there are any problems. Is there anything that is unnecessary in the product or people do not like something about my product. When you identify these, you will know that there is something that is causing problems for your products to reach the heights that it deserves. While you look forward to implementing this, you must be careful about the following factors.

• Removing some features will also lower the cost price for this product.
• If someone likes that feature, then removing it will make you lose that customer.
  

Requirements:

Apart from the problems that can be present in a product you should also look for the requirements for the product. Sometimes people are expecting a lot more from a product and missing out on any little feature means that your product will not be preferred in the market as it should be. So, thinking about this can help in innovating new ideas in improved versions of your product.

Change:

After the features, you must look for changing things that are not related to the physical parts and features of the products. That can be the name, the price, the concept to any other things that will attract more customers into buying your product.

2. Combine

Another way of innovating the market with your product is by using the method of combination. There can be cases where your 2 different products or their features can be combined to make a new product. As people will see a lot of convenience in using these, they can easily be used to target the potential audience.

One of the best examples of this terminology is that the kitchen processor makers introduce their products as a 5 in one or they make one item that has the features of many other items. This helps them in getting a great audience.

Another example is of the companies that market their tablet computers and their portable laptop covers for those tablet computers. People think that these computers can perform as a laptop as needed. This idea has also created a huge revolution in the market of laptops and tablets.

3. Adapt:

If you are looking to apply the what is scamper technique for making your products, this is one of the most important parts. This is because this part will make you think about the things that you need to adapt to your product to make it change the problem and get rid of the problem. This is not only about making the product good by your ideas. IT includes getting ideas from the following sources.

• Getting ideas from the existing parts.
• Getting new ideas from the history of your product.
• Getting ideas from some other products.
• Getting ideas from the products of your competitors.

Here the main goal is not to get the idea, but the main goal is to implement that idea to make your product adapt to the requirements of the customers.

4. Modify

Sometimes a product is going great in the market but still some modifications are required. This can be due to the customer feedback about your product or you came up with another idea. Here are some things that you can modify your product.

Features

Features are the real value makers for your product. Most of the time companies keep on adding new features in their products but this makes the prices go sky-high. If you are looking to modify the features in your products, then you must ask yourself if this feature will make any significant difference in your product.

While asking this question, you must consider all the new and old features and you must also consider this about keeping them and removing them.

Shape and outlook:

Apart from the features, another thing that you can change in your product is the outlook on your product. Here you must think if you can change the outlook and how it will affect the presence of my product in the market. Here are some ways to change the outlook of your product.

• Name.
• Shape.
• Color.
• Form.

Sometimes changing these can create a revolution in the market about the product.

New features.

While you are thinking about the modifications, you must think of the new features or new modification will increase the functionality of your product.

5. Put to another use:

This is another great way of bringing innovation to your product. In this step, you must explore how you can implement one feature of your product and use it for other uses as well. If we take an example of this from the mobile phone market, we can see how some manufacturers started using the charging port of their phones as the audio output.

This not only made the port common for their devices, but it also brought revolutionization in the market that most companies are now following the trend. While you are exploring this step about your product, you must also look out for the other factors that might affect your product. Some of them are listed below.

• How will it affect different users?
• Will the new users be able to use this product?
• What kind of people will be interested in using this product?
  

6. Eliminate

Sometimes removing some parts or features from a product is the option that can make your product better. Here you can ask yourself how you can make your product better by removing a specific feature or part. This depends a lot on the functionality of that part and feature. For example, in the past cars were not imagined without an engine.

But now we have a lot of cars that do not have an engine and they run on electricity. In this example the part removed was the engine and it revolutionized the automobile industry by making the driving costs unbelievably low. While working you must consider the following things.

• Will this affect the functionality?
• Will it affect the cost?
• How can I further simplify the product?

7. Reverse

Sometimes the solution to a certain problem is present in front of you. All you need to do is to understand the working of things and then reverse or rearrange the resources that you have. In this way, you will be able to do effective brainstorming to get rid of any problem or addition of new features.

It is very important to consider how this new arrangement, change in order or the reverse affect the functionality of your product.

How can you implement SCAMPER to the benefit of your product?

For most people, it is not very easy to bring innovation to the market because of any feature in their product. This is because the scamper method of creative thinking can be used. Here is how you can implement your product.

1. The first step is to take a product or products that you want to innovate and think about what you want to do to it.
2. Now you will have to think about the product and the feature using all 7 components of the scamper creative thinking technique.
3. Each component of scamper will provide you with an answer. From these answers, you will be able to make a preferable solution that you can implement on your product.
4. After you are done with one feature, you can repeat the whole process on the same product to get more innovative ideas about the same product.

Conclusion.

While sometimes it gets very difficult to come up with new ideas this method of creative thinking can help you to get new and innovative ideas about your existing products and the new ones also. We hope that you understand what is scamper. This thinking technique challenges your thinking capabilities that help you in exploring new possibilities.