New Article in OBHDP: The Double-Edged Sword of Endorsing External Ideas

The double-edged sword of endorsing external ideas: Juggling competitive advantage and organizational compatibility concerns

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597825000299

Rebekah SungEun Hong, Vijaya Venkataramani, Mengxi Yang

Although organizations encourage employees to seek creative ideas from external sources, managers can be hesitant to implement external ideas. Their resistance often stems from the “not-invented-here” (NIH) syndrome—a common bias where decision-makers view externally sourced knowledge, such as ideas or technologies, with skepticism. Despite this bias, other research has shown that decision-makers are often receptive to external knowledge. What explains these divergent reactions to innovative external ideas? What factors impact this inherent tension between embracing external creativity and battling internal skepticism? Across multiple studies, the authors find that managers face competing considerations when evaluating external creative ideas; the risk of being outcompeted makes them more receptive to external ideas, whereas the risk of incompatibility with current systems makes them less receptive. The authors also investigate whether managers’ perceptions of technological turbulence in the environment have a substantial impact on these competing pathways. When the authors compared the strengths of the competing pathways, they found that the risk of incompatibility tended to outweigh the risk of being outcompeted. This research suggests that organizations may benefit from structured evaluation frameworks that help guide managers through the evaluation of externally sourced ideas. This structure could prevent biases that inhibit the implementation of helpful ideas.

P.S. if you can’t access the full-text let us (m-kouchaki@kellogg.northwestern.edu or mikebaer@asu.edu) know and we’d be happy to share a copy.