The process of framing innovation activities: How strategic leaders erode their ideas for radical innovations

Understanding what impedes and facilitates radical innovation is crucial. This study introduces a process perspective on managerial cognition into the strategic leadership literature to elucidate the dynamics that contribute to idea erosion during the development of radical innovation. Employing a framing perspective and utilizing longitudinal data from a single case, this study presents a process model of strategic leaders' framing-induced idea erosion. At the heart of this process are two dynamics. First is a dynamic consisting of the anticipation of innovation that fails to account for the necessary iterative process, leading to a growing mismatch between expectations and activities. Second is a dynamic consisting of cognitive processes, where strategic leaders frame this mismatch as a failure, this intensifying over time. This study shows that strategic leaders tend to favor incremental over radical innovation, not due to a shortage of ideas but because they frame their activities as failures. •Incremental innovation is due not to a lack of ideas for radical innovation but to leaders’ framing of their innovation activities as failures.•Failure framing (unintentionally) reduces the resources needed for radical innovation, ultimately eroding the ideas.•Avoiding these pitfalls can mean the difference between success and failure for strategic leaders of incumbents.•Despite the setback, this study underscores the pivotal role of strategic leaders in anticipating radical innovations.