And the Winner Is? Innovation Performance of Founder Versus Agent CEOs

Using the lens of executive life cycle framework, we theorize that the innovation performance of founders versus agent CEOs unfolds differently over time. In our study, founder CEOs not only consistently outperformed agent CEOs in generating innovation outputs, but also derived higher value from their innovations over the course of their tenure. As organizations grew in size, founders’ innovation performance declined at a faster pace as compared to that of agent CEOs; however, it consistently remained at a higher level than that of agent CEOs. Our findings have theoretical and practical implications for how performance differences evolve between founders and agent CEOs, and underscores the importance for differently evaluating the two over the course of their tenures.