Doing More with Less: Innovation Input and Output in Family Firms

Family firms are often portrayed as an important yet conservative form of organization that is reluctant to invest in innovation; however, simultaneously, evidence has shown that family firms are flourishing and in fact constitute many of the world’s most innovative firms. Our study contributes to disentangling this puzzling effect. We argue that family firms—owing to the family’s high level of control over the firm, wealth concentration, and importance of nonfinancial goals—invest less in innovation but have an increased conversion rate of innovation input into output and, ultimately, a higher innovation output than nonfamily firms. Empirical evidence from a meta-analysis based on 108 primary studies from 42…