Date：
October 15（Wednesday), 2025
from 16:00 to 17:30
Topic:
“Business Scholars on Boards and Firm Innovation”
Speaker:
Cornelia Storz
(Professor, Goethe University, Frankfurt)
Abstract:
Why do business scholars-directors, rather than STEM scholar-directors, drive firm innovation? This paper addresses this unexpected pattern through an abductive research design combining panel data, interviews, and publication analysis. Drawing on a hand-collected dataset of Chinese listed firms (2008–2018), we show that business scholars on corporate boards enhance innovation by contributing strategic knowledge – higher-order, portable insights rooted in frameworks, heuristics, and theories that help firms navigate the uncertainty inherent in innovation across market dynamics, organizational design, and competitive positioning. We theorize strategic knowledge as a distinct asset, whose impact is contingent on insider technology directors’ presence and social validation. By challenging prevailing assumptions about scientific expertise, we contribute to the knowledge-based view and corporate governance literature, reframing how strategy-related higher-order expertise can support firm-level innovation.
Venue:
onsite
IIR Laboratory 2 (Room#219) of the second floor of the IIR building
Organizer:
Aoshima, Yaichi
This forum is jointly organized by MIC (Management Innovation Research Center), Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study.
Deadline:
9:00, October 15, 2025
For registration, please click on “Innovation Forum” below.