Mitigating not-invented-here syndrome in consultant knowledge transfer by developing appropriate implementation guidelines

What is it about?

Not-invented-here (NIH) syndrome presents a major hurdle for successful consultant-client knowledge transfer. The problem is that the consultant's knowledge can often be seen as external to the client company. Notably, researchers dealing with this knowledge externality are disconnected from the research done by implementation guidelines developers and vice versa. By first pointing out this gap, we propose five applicable principles to overcome this hurdle proactively through developing appropriate NIH-resistant implementation guidelines for consultants to use during the knowledge transfer. In this way, we propose to shift from the predominantly accepted reactive approach that leaves the consultant to mitigate NIH only through consultant-client interaction which can often result in rejection of the knowledge that consultant proposes.

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Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash