Management by Originals: Inventor CEOs and Firms’ Strategic Change

Abstract

We build upon theories and studies regarding inventors and strategic leader-ship to explain how inventor CEOs are likely to drive a firm’s strategic change. We explainwhy inventor CEOs have the unique attributes of divergent thinking and intrinsic motiva-tion and, accordingly, pursue strategies that deviate from the past. We further suggest thatthe positive relationship between inventor CEO status and strategic change is strengthenedby CEO liberalism, CEO career variety, and industry dynamism. Using a comprehensive lon-gitudinal database of S&P 1500 firms, we test our theoretical predictions and find empiricalsupport for most of our hypotheses except for the moderating effect of industry dynamism.In highlighting the prevalence of inventor CEOs and showing how this achievement-basedexperience of CEOs is related to strategic change, our study identifies an important andnovel antecedent of this important strategic outcome