Not invented here
Not invented here (NIH) is a stance adopted by social, corporate, or institutional cultures that avoid using or buying already existing products, research, standards, or knowledge because of their external origins and costs, such as royalties. Research illustrates a strong bias against ideas from the outside.[1]
The reasons for not wanting to use the work of others are varied, but some can include a desire to support a local economy instead of paying royalties to a foreign license-holder, fear of patent infringement, lack of understanding of the foreign work, an unwillingness to acknowledge or value the work of others, jealousy, or forming part of a wider turf war.[2] As a social phenomenon, this philosophy can manifest as an unwillingness to adopt an idea or product because it originates from another culture, a form of tribalism.[3]
The term is normally used in a pejorative sense. The opposite predisposition is sometimes called "proudly found elsewhere" (PFE)[4] or "invented elsewhere".
In computing[edit]
In programming, it is also common to refer to the "NIH syndrome" as the tendency towards reinventing the wheel (reimplementing something that is already available) based on the belief that in-house developments are inherently better suited, more secure, more controlled, quicker to develop, and incur lower overall cost (including maintenance cost) than using existing implementations. In-house developments are often collaborative with each other. When two in-house developments come together, it is informally known as "computer incest."[citation needed]
In some cases, software with the same functionality as an existing one is re-implemented just to allow the use of a different software license. One approach to doing so is clean room design.
See also[edit]
- Anti-pattern
- Appeal to spite
- Association fallacy
- De facto standard
- Dogfooding
- Editor wars
- Ethnocentrism
- Genetic fallacy
- Groupthink
- IKEA effect
- Invented Here
- List of cognitive biases
- Protectionism
- Psychological endowment effect of ascribing higher value to what is one's own
- Reinventing the wheel
- Wishful thinking
- You aren't gonna need it (YAGNI)
References[edit]
- ^ Piezunka, Henning,; Dahlander, Linus (26 Jun 2014). "Distant Search, Narrow Attention: How Crowding Alters Organizations' Filtering of Suggestions in Crowdsourcing". Academy of Management Journal. 58: 856–880.
- ^ "The Innovation Playbook: A Revolution in Business Excellence", Nicholas J. Webb, Chris Thoen, John Wiley and Sons, 2010, ISBN 0-470-63796-X,
- ^ The Cambridge economic history of modern Britain
- ^ HBS.edu P&G's New Innovation Model
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