There's a great quote in Roger von Oech's book, "A Whack on the Side of the Head" that reads as follows...

"Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different."

The quote is attributed to the Nobel prize winning physician Albert Szent-Györgyi.

I'm sure you've heard the expression, "There are no new ideas." The discovery suggests, rather, that there are new ways to look at things.

How do you look at something different? One method I'd recommend is to "scamper." Yes,hopping around like a small animal or child *is* fun, that's not what scampering is in this context. Scamper is an acronym for a set of techniques that help you see things different.

You can apply this to a problem, a potential innovation, or to explore ways to make your weekly staff meetings more effective. You can filter your challenge through one or all of the

• Substitute - Replace all or part of your product, service, or process with something else. Change out the people, place, time or situation with something else.
• Combine - Put parts together. Mix and integrate typically unassociated parts. Bring together other ideas and situations. What ideas can be combined? What about a blend? What about an ensemble? What materials could you combine? What else can be merged with this.
• Adapt - How can you alter, change, or use part of another element? Can you change it to meet your purpose? Is there something you could copy? What style could you emulate? What could you make it look like? What idea can you incorporate?
• Modify - What if this were somewhat changed? How can this be altered for the better? How about a new twist? What change can we make in the process? What about changing its shape?
• Put To Other Use - What are other ways you can put your challenge to use?
• Eliminate - What can be taken away? What isn't truly necessary? What isn't required for functionality? What if it were smaller?
• Rearrange - What if the order were changed? Where should this part be placed in relation to that? What other layout might be better? What about timing? Or a change of pace?

When you're needing to make a discovery or innovation, or just come up with an idea... consider the techniques of Scamper and find new ways of thinking about the challenge.

SCAMPER Background
For those interested, Scamper was created by Robert Eberle using Alex Osborn's 1953 book, Applied Imagination. It's an often recommended strategy found in most creative problem solving books.

(So even Scamper itself was Robert's way of thinking something different from Alex did about these ideas).

By the way, I've incorporated Scamper (and other related methods) in a tool called Big Dig. You may enjoy checking it out.