How does CEO curiosity affect firm innovation?

In the present study, we introduce CEO curiosity as a new personality dimension of CEOs to explain corporate strategy. Prior research has implied that CEO curiosity may play a critical role in firm innovation. However, exploration linking curiosity at the executive level to organizational innovation is surprisingly lacking. To this end, we aim to examine the impact of CEO curiosity on firm innovation. Based on a sample of 563 Chinese firms, we found that CEO curiosity positively influences firm innovation via boundary-spanning search, while organizational inertia weakens both the direct effect of CEO curiosity on boundary-spanning search and its indirect effect on firm innovation. With this study we contribute to both the upper echelons theory and the microfoundation of innovation and offer new insights into the study of curiosity by unveiling the understudied but important role of CEO curiosity in firm innovation. •CEO curiosity plays an important role in promoting corporate innovation.•CEO curiosity positively influences firm innovation via boundary-spanning search.•Organizational inertia weakens the effect of CEO curiosity on boundary-spanning search.•Organizational inertia weakens CEO curiosity's indirect effect on firm innovation.