SCAMPER

Origin. Osborn's checklists (1953), assembled into the mnemonic by Eberle (1971).

Mechanism. A closed set of seven transformation operators applied exhaustively to a fixed object. The exhaustiveness is the point: coverage replaces inspiration.

Procedure. Substitute · Combine · Adapt · Modify (magnify/minify) · Put to other uses · Eliminate · Reverse. Apply each to each component of the object, not to the object as a whole.

Applies to. Incremental product variation; any object with an enumerable component list.

Limitations. Operates on existing objects only. It cannot generate a category, and applying it to an abstract goal produces grammatical output with no referent.