Scott Berkun has some deep thoughts on the plague of “not invented here.”

An executive might proclaim the wonders of the new (worse) thing to his division without encountering anyone willing to stand up for the old (better) thing. It’s harder to inflate the importance of one’s own work if the key decision was to buy or borrow from elsewhere.

Great organizations reuse, repurpose, and extend that which already works. By reusing that which already exists, and is known to work, time and effort can be better focused on that which is new and innovative. Within the context of the large organization, innovation is far easier when the ethos is not to reinvent, but to explore that which is new.