The Use of SCAMPER Thinking Tools : Create Something New and Unique

Last week on February 11th-12th I attended the very first workshop on XL Axiata Future Leaders, this also marks my 2 years journey with Jogja cohort 1. I was mentored by Rizki Oceano which taught me tons of new knowledge.

There’s one that caught my attention, which is SCAMPER Thinking tools. Bob Eberle found this technique to help people come up with creative ideas for developing new products, and also for improving current ones. Besides that, SCAMPER Thinking tools could also be used in another situation, for example, if you need to create a program for your organization, just simply use SCAMPER to guide you.

SCAMPER stands for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put into other use, Eliminate, and Reverse. You can use a specific tool from SCAMPER to brainstorms new ideas for your specific purpose.

Source : Gramedia.com

Marketing has been one of my areas of interest, especially in today’s world everything is done through online marketing. It pushes the company to keep innovating and adapting to the current situation. Various strategies such as Digital Marketing, Inbound Marketing, SEO, etc are a few examples of marketing strategies nowadays.

Especially in my current major as a communication student, I learn quite a few strategies regarding marketing communication and that’s an interesting topic. You get to learn how marketers create engaging communication to affect and persuade a potential customer. there’s also a Life Cycle Product, which is the duration of how long the product can sustain until the consumer slowly leaves the brand or product.

However companies often have obstacles in developing their unique strategies for marketing, that’s why we always see a lot of trends that’s been followed by the other company just because one company can implement the strategies. Therefore, the use of SCAMPER Thinking tools in brainstorming can be a way for companies to achieve new ideas that can be implemented, for example the marketing strategy of Stockbit.

Stockbit is the leading social platform that redesigned information sharing for stock investors and traders in Indonesia. their goal is to make stock investment simple for individual investors. so the company came up with some very interesting strategies to advertise their product/apps. Indonesia is known as high context culture, so instead of using a direct message for their potential customer they use daily conversation as a basis for their ads, and it went viral and successfully for them. Their ads become sensasional and center of attention on many different platforms.

For those of you wondering “how I could start using SCAMPER thinking tools?” well you could start implementing SCAMPER into your brainstorms using a simple question. Here are a few examples of the simple questions

• Can you use this product somewhere else, or as a substitute for something else? (substitute)
• What could you combine to maximize the uses of this product? (combine)
• Who or what could you emulate to adapt this product? (adapt)
• What could you add to modify this product? (modify)
• Who else could use this product? (put to another use)
• What features, parts, or rules could you eliminate? (eliminate)
• How could you reorganize this product? (reverse)

We innovate by starting with the customer and working backwards. That becomes the touchstone for how we invent.
-Jeff Bezos

Do remember some of the ideas that you generate during the brainstorming may not be suitable for your needs or situation, but the goal for this thinking tool is to acquire wild and creative ideas at the same time.

This is the end of my first reflective writing, there are tons of knowledge that I also receive during the first workshop, like KWL thinking tools, Emotional Intelligence, Effective Communication, Entrepreneurship, and innovation.