Founder CEO, CEO Characteristics, and Firm Innovation Efficiency: An Empirical Study of China’s GEM-Listed Companies

While it is widely known that founder Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) can influence firm innovation, few studies have comprehensively examined how the CEO affects firm’s innovation input, output, and input-to-output conversion rate, these effects depend on CEO’s demographic, cognitive, corporate positional characteristics. We analyze nine-year panel data of China’s Growth Enterprise Market (GEM)-listed companies to empirically study relationship between (vs. non-founder CEO), characteristics, efficiency. Our analysis produces four major findings. First, firms a lower input higher output than firms. Second, compared with male CEOs, female CEOs further reduce without sacrificing output. Third, education level also Finally, are not chairman board, take dual positions (CEO chairman) allocate but does increase. These findings implications for both research practice in helping achieve sustainable development.