Define: "Reinvent the Wheel" in Business
Catastrophic fiscal burn
"Calculate the hourly burn rateBurn rateThe terrifying dollar amount your team is wasting by arguing about button colors on a Zoom call. of the engineering team building the custom tool, compare it to the commercial SaaS invoice, and accidentally leave the math on the shared whiteboard."
The unnecessary duplication of effort spent designing a custom process or solution when proven industry-standard alternatives already exist.
What does "Reinvent the Wheel" actually mean?
"Our VP of Engineering wants to pad his resume, so instead of paying $20 a month for an off-the-shelf tool, 12 developers are going to spend a year building a worse version from scratch."
"Let's leverageLeverageExploiting a tool, process, or junior employee until they completely break down. existing templates rather than trying to reinvent the wheel for this client pitch."
"He claimed we did not want to reinvent the wheel, right before ordering the team to write a custom internal ticketing system in Python instead of renewing our Jira license."
By The Chief Waste Officer
18 years in the corporate trenches quantifying waste so you don't have to.
Related Terminology
Tired of hearing this?
Next time someone says "Reinvent the Wheel" in a meeting, track exactly how much company money they just wasted. Play Buzzword Bingo, generate a waste invoice, and stop the bleeding.
