Once an Innovator, Always an Innovator? Founder-CEO Effects on Innovation Over Business Lifecycle

In this paper, we examine whether and when having the entrepreneurs in firms as founder-CEOs affect firm innovations over time, and at different stages of development such as conception, commercialization, and growth stages, as compared to having professional CEOs. In doing so, we draw upon the upper echelons, organizational lifecycle, and corporate governance literatures and suggest that founder-CEOs produce more innovations than their professional counterparts in commercialization and growth stages, but not in the conception stage. Moreover, we theorize how the top management and board of directors are composed moderate these relationships differently through the venture’s lifecycle. By examining 641 high-tech ventures, we find support for our theory. Our findings have implications for a number of streams of work including literatures on CEO succession, new venture innovation, upper echelons theory, and corporate governance.