Mysteries of NIH Syndrome

Abstract

Many studies cite Katz and Allen (1982) as a validation of Not-Invented-Here (NIH) syndrome. However, their “validation” is misled by 1) easily adopting a smoothing method on a scatter diagram with no clear trends, and 2) arbitrarily choosing the intercept on the y-axis. The greatest mystery is that Katz and Allen (1982) used NIH syndrome to refer to a decline in project performance caused by the length of the project members’ tenure. In spite of the fact that NIH syndrome is normally considered to refer to “self-sufficiency”, Katz and Allen (1982) had used it to refer to the decline in performance brought about by the length of service of project members. However, the real mystery is that many researchers continue to cite this as a study advocating self-sufficiency.