I’ve always been fascinated by brainstorming tools and techniques. One of my favorites is SCAMPER, which utilizes a large number of idea-spurring questions to help you think divergently when improving an existing idea.
Our brains tend to stop thinking creatively when we generate what we think is the first “right” idea. But there is much to be gained by generating additional alternatives. When you have more possibilities to choose from, you can select the best one to solve your problem.
It leverages the brain’s power of association. When you bump two unrelated ideas together, they often trigger additional ideas and insights. How is this valuable? It forces you to look at challenges or problems from a variety of creative perspectives. In so doing, it whacks you out of your usual, rutted mode of thinking and often yields valuable, creative ideas.
I loved SCAMPER so much that I gathered trigger words from a number of publicly available sources and combined them to create the ultimate SCAMPER mind map, with nearly 250 triggers.
But not everyone uses mind maps. For these people, it created a certain amount of friction. First, it was only available as a downloadable template. That meant they needed to own a mind mapping software program to use it. It also required them to select a branch, open it and then randomly pick a trigger. If that didn’t produce any fresh insights, they needed to repeat this process again.
I wondered if there was a way to make it accessible and useful to more people. I envisioned a simple web page tool that could serve up random SCAMPER triggers on demand.
Thanks to the amazing powers of Claude AI, I just built it. You can check it out here:
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