Inventor CEO Involvement, Governing Stakeholders, and Firm Exploratory and Exploitative Innovation

Abstract

Recent research suggests that inventor CEOs’ increase innovative output in major corporations. Using a sample of S&P 1500 firms between 1994 and 2010, we theorize and find that inventor CEOs’ continued, direct involvement in their firms’ innovative activities is also associated with more exploitative and less exploratory innovation. These effects are stronger when the inventor CEO is also a founder, but weaker in firms with greater institutional ownership and more diverse boards. Supplemental tests also show moderating effects for various other CEO, firm, board, and TMT factors. We therefore contribute to research on governance, leadership, and exploration-exploitation by showing how inventor CEO involvement and background, in isolation and in combination with characteristics of important governing stakeholders, influence the type of innovation pursued by their firms.

Speaker Biography

Steven Boivie is the Carroll & Dorothy Conn Chair in New Ventures Leadership at the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. He received his Ph.D. in strategic management from the University of Texas at Austin, his master’s degree from Brigham Young University, and his bachelor’s degree from Utah State University. He is primarily interested in how behavioral and social forces affect human actors at the top of the organization and he conducts research in the areas of corporate governance, top executives, and directors. His research has been published in the Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, Journal of Applied Psychology, Academy of Management Annals, and Journal of Management. Steve’s research has also been mentioned in a number of press outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review online, Forbes.com, IR Magazine, Bloomberg, The Economist, and more. He is currently serving on the editorial boards of Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, and Strategic Management Journal.