Not Invented Here Syndrome
We avoid using or buying products, research, or knowledge from external sources.
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. The 'not invented here' syndrome leads organizations to reinvent solutions at great expense rather than adopt existing effective solutions from outside.
What it looks like in the wild.
- Everyday life Internal Frameworks Engineering teams build internal tools that duplicate well-established open source solutions, wasting development time due to institutional pride.
Recognising a definition is not the same skill as spotting it.
Two scenarios from the app, with distractors drawn from the same family of biases — which is what makes them hard.
A filmmaker avoids using stock footage or music, insisting that every single visual and sound element in the documentary must be originally captured and composed.
A researcher dismisses findings from another laboratory that contradict their own published results, not because of methodological concerns but because the results did not originate from their own research group.
Biases rarely arrive alone.
Understand more. Assume less.
188 biases, 18,869 scenarios, and a record of how you actually decide.
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