Not invented here syndrome

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The not-invented-here-syndrome (abbreviation NIH , German  not invented here ) describes disparagingly the disregard of already existing knowledge by companies or institutions due to the place of origin.

Definition and explanation

The problem is a consequence of groupthink . In the case of a make-or-buy decision , NIH gives preference to self-creation. This can be associated with higher costs and a longer period of time, but it can also have the positive effect of not disrupting well-established processes and training your own performance.

Dan Ariely quotes Mark Twain from his essay Some national stupidities as an early reference on the subject:

“How long it takes for one part of the world to adopt another part's useful ideas is a wonder and inexplicable. This form of stupidity is not limited to any community or nation; it is universal. The fact is, not only do people take a long time to adopt useful ideas, they also sometimes adamantly insist on spurning them outright. [...] "

- Mark Twain : Europe and Elsewhere, New York 1923. [indirectly quoted from Ariely 2010 in German translation]

In other words, NIH syndrome looks like this:

“The NIH syndrome represents a basic attitude towards the acquisition of external knowledge that is more negative than would be necessary on the basis of economic considerations. The NIH syndrome often arises from insufficient or unsatisfactory experience in the process of acquiring external knowledge, which leads to an aversion to it. "

Solving the problem can be difficult:

“In order to overcome the NIH syndrome, patterns of behavior and attitudes that have been acquired over the years must be revised. The acquisition of external knowledge made possible by this leads to an increase of previously unused potential. "

Examples

Various examples can be found in the large NASA organization. This is where teams and departments constantly meet, and their knowledge exchange is of economic and sometimes vital importance. That was roughly the case with the Atlas rocket , but also when it comes to the cooperation between the NASA organization and the DOD ( United States Department of Defense ).

Another example of the NIH syndrome is the Apollo program of NASA . It was recognized there that departments were not communicating with one another sufficiently. The conclusion of the upper management of NASA was that the safety of the astronauts could not be guaranteed if the NIH syndrome was not overcome. As a countermeasure, special positions were created at NASA and filled with people who were not permanently assigned to any department. The owners of these positions were and still have to fulfill the task of commuting between the departments and carrying information back and forth, with which the respective executing persons never made themselves particularly popular. But that didn't matter. What mattered was that they had a very positive impact on the reliability of the projects. Nevertheless, there were occasional breakdowns. For example, the outer skin of the Skylab was modified by the responsible construction department without coordinating this modification with the aerodynamics department. As a result, the fairing did not withstand the aerodynamic forces during the rocket launch while flying through the Earth's atmosphere and was severely damaged, with further negative consequences for the project.

More precisely, the introduction of a PERT ( Program evaluation and review technique ) in the Apollo program was also received with a critical eye.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry in the glossary of the project magazine. Retrieved March 20, 2007.
  2. ↑ a b U. Lichtenthaler, H. Ernst: Attitudes to externally organizing knowledge management tasks: a review, reconsideration and extension of the NIH syndrome. In: R&D Management. 36, 4, 2006, pp. 367-386.
  3. ^ Dutch von Ehrenfried: The Birth of NASA: The Work of the Space Task Group, America's First True Space Pioneers. Springer, 2016, p. 96.
  4. ^ Henry R. Hertzfeld (ed.), Joel S. Greenberg: Space Economics . American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics, November 1992, p. 430.
  5. ^ Arthur L. Slotkin: Doing the Impossible: George E. Mueller and the Management of NASA's Human Spaceflight Program. Springer Science & Business Media, 2012, p. 66.

literature

  • Ralph Katz, Thomas J. Allen: Investigating the Not Invented Here (NIH) Syndrome: a look at the performance, tenure and communication patterns of 50 R&D project groups. In: R&D Management. vol. 12, 1, 1982, pp. 7-19.
  • Joel Spolsky: In Defense of Not-Invented-Here Syndrome.
  • Herwig Mehrwald: The 'Not Invented Here' (NIH) syndrome in research and development. Wiesbaden 1999.