The Cognitive Base of CTO and the Technological Radicalness of Inventions

This study provides a new perspective on the relationship between the characteristics of a key executive in technology development and a firm's technological radicalness. Specifically, this study examines how the experience diversity of a chief technology officer (CTO) drives the technological radicalness of his or her firm and how the group attributes of the top management team (TMT) moderates that effect. Using data on 148 firms in US manufacturing industries, this study hypothesized and found that a CTO’s diverse functional and industrial experiences significantly increased technological radicalness. This study also examined the moderating effects of TMT characteristics, including TMT size and TMT tenure, on the relationship between CTO experience diversity and technological radicalness. TMT tenure negatively moderated the relationships between a CTO’s functional and industrial experience diversity and radicalness; TMT size negatively moderated the effects of a CTO’s industrial, but not functional, diversity on the technological radicalness of the firm. The implications of the results for both academics and practitioners are discussed.