Innovative firm behavior - understanding the role of family influence

Innovation is a key driver of long-term success for organizations. Thus it is not surprising that researchers have long sought to understand enablers and impediments of innovation in firms and have aimed to gain a nuanced understanding of research and development processes with-in organizations. Yet much of this work has neglected the influence of the firm's owners on the respective organization's innovation behavior. Only recently, scholars have started to gain interest in innovation in a particular type of organization: family firms. Family firms are not only the dominant type of organization around the world, yet they have been also shown to substantially differ from non-family firms concerning, for instance, predominant goals, risk preferences, and available resources.First studies on innovation in family firms reveal that those firms differ, for instance in terms of search breadth, resources dedicated to R&D, and type of preferred innovation. Despite this growing understanding, an abundant number of research gaps remains and many of previous findings are not cumulative so far.