Purpose The purpose of this paper is to expand the understanding of the “front end” of innovation by examining the influence of top executives, who allocate the resources and cultivate the culture in which inventions are born, on the innovation process. Design/methodology/approach This paper...

This study examines family firms' propensity to protect their intellectual property through patents. Building on the mixed gamble logic of the behavioral agency model, we theorize that family ownership has a U-shaped relationship with firm propensity to patent. Specifically, we argue that family...