Do General Managerial Skills Spur Innovation?
研究发现，拥有更多通用管理技能的首席执行官（CEO）所在企业专利产出更多，原因在于他们能获取企业现有技术领域之外的知识，且技能可迁移至其他项目，从而容忍失败。
We show that firms with chief executive officers (CEOs) who gain general managerial skills over their lifetime of work experience produce more patents. We address the potential endogenous CEO–firm matching bias using firm–CEO fixed effects and variation in the enforceability of noncompete agreements across states and over time during the CEO’s career. Our findings suggest that generalist CEOs spur innovation because they acquire knowledge beyond the firm’s current technological domain, and they have skills that can be applied elsewhere should innovation projects fail. We conclude that an efficient labor market for executives can promote innovation by providing a mechanism of tolerance for failure. The Internet appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2828 . This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance.