NIH and the Case for Diversity
NIH. Not Invented Here. This mindset can be a real killer when it comes to innovation. If allowed to exist within your organization for whatever reason, the result may be No Innovation Happening. Your immediate challenge may be highly specialized and your skill set finely tuned to take it on but a real breakthrough may end up coming from a key element never considered within the original scope of the problem domain. Instead of putting off external resources as a distraction or irrelevant, there is real benefit in a progressive plan to widen the scope of potential solutions.
NIH can be found in both mature companies and startups. An established business is likely to trust their hard earned knowledge base as the preferred perspective for driving growth. This generally works for incremental efforts but increasing the diversity of the team can improve the odds if the goal is breakthrough innovation or entry into new markets,
A startup with their ambition to take on a novel market opportunity or invent a new one will strive to maintain a strong focus on their objective. This is a reasonable expectation for a small team but limited by the in-house experience set and over-taxed bandwidth. In reality, this is often why startups fail. Problems are real, resources constrained and milestones are finite. When things get tough, stress induced focus monopolizes the available bandwidth, neglecting the option to consider a more diverse solution set. It is the nature of a startup.
A productive solution is proposed in the form of an entity defined as the XTM. Supplementing the incumbent core team with complementary skill set and a diverse range of experience to provide additional bandwidth and expertise to generate and vet alternative solutions. Startups seem like they are always in firefighting mode but the desired results are better served by the timely development and integration of suitable resources.
The analysis done in "Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation" cites the impact of discontinuous innovation across a range of industries and eras. For "competence enhancing" innovation, where existing processes and products were substantially enhanced for an ongoing enterprise, more than half of the innovaitons came from an external entity. In the case of "competence destroying" innovation, fully three quarters of the developments came from outside the existing incumbent. Clearly it pays to look elsewhere when seeking dynamic growth potential. Rather than waiting for external innovation to compromise your company's future, it should be enlisted to support your plans for success.
Agile innovation is not about who is smarter or who is more "innovative". Nobody wins that battle and it's irrelevant. The issue is how to best address the unknowns associated with the challenge. Integrating a flexible and capable external resource can be the key to a successful solution.