Strategic Consensus And Product Innovation Performance in High-Tech Ventures

Abstract

This study examines whether high-tech ventures would be better at product innovation if their top management team (TMT) members had higher levels of strategic consensus at founding. From an organizational imprinting perspective, we propose that consensus assists strategy formulation by enhancing TMT decision speed; higher TMT decision speed then facilitates strategy implementation in which product innovation is realized. We also suggest that this indirect influence of strategic consensus could be contextually sensitive, with external condition (i.e., environmental competitiveness) moderating the relationship between strategic consensus and decision speed, and internal condition (i.e., structural specialization among TMT members) moderating the relationship between decision speed and product innovation. Drawing on a sample of 92 Chinese high-tech ventures with a lagged, multiple-respondent design, we found support for these arguments.

Keywords: Strategic Consensus, Product Innovation, Decision Speed, Team Structure