CEOs as inventors- you can probably ramble off a few. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison. Did you know these self-touted “geeks” could in fact be more instrumental to a company’s success than a well touted MBA-educated CEO?
That’s according to a recent publication in the Harvard Business Review. CEOs that started out as inventors (definition= owning a patent) were more crucial to the success of the business. This was looking at data from 935 CEOs that owned a patent and comparing similar businesses with those that didn’t. According to the article “innovations associated with these patents were also more likely to be radical in nature, resulting in the introduction of more breakthrough products, compared with similar peer firms.”
As a control, researchers also looked at the impact of CEO exit from the firm comparing inventors and non-inventors alike. The departure of an inventor CEO was likely to have greater impact- and be more detrimental- than their non-inventor counterpart.
What does this mean? Hire only inventor-CEOs? Probably not. There are certainly attributes when considering non-inventor CEOs that will be desirable. Still, it indicates the innovation culture instilled by inventor CEOs, that are willing to take more risk and have a higher tolerance for failure, will be a driver for a company seeking to grow.
Link to the article: https://hbr.org/2019/09/research-companies-led-by-inventors-produce-better-innovations
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