Non-Linear Relationships of Executives’ Strategic Actions on Innovation and New Product Performance

Abstract

Though executives are limited to influence new product development projects directly, they greatly influence the success of new products indirectly by directing a firm’s innovation activities. Drawing on strategic leadership theory, this study investigates how executives’ strategic actions on innovation, i.e., encouragement to take risks, autonomy, and customer orientation, differentially affect new product performance in a non-linear fashion. In resolving the debate on whether and how executives play important roles in shaping different strategic actions for better new product performance, this study offers a more fine-grained perspective regarding what degree of intensity of each different strategic action on innovation is optimal and conducive to new product performance. Relying on dyadic data collected from marketing executives and project managers in the U.S. high-tech industries, the results show that new product development projects get most benefit if executives’ support either very low or high le...