Understanding product innovation in family firms is an important research endeavor given the economic predominance of those firms, their idiosyncrasies, and the importance of constant renewal for those firms to achieve transgenerational survival. Recently, family firm research has highlighted the role of next‐generation chief executive officers (CEOs; i.e., successors) who are often seen as drivers for innovating a family firm’s products. However, prior research has typically neglected that predecessors, who are often portrayed as less willing to introduce product innovation, frequently remain involved postsuccession through occupying board positions and thus still substantially influence the decision‐making processes and outcomes of family firms, such as product innovation. As a result, our understanding of the role of predecessors and their postsuccession involvement in family firms’ product innovation remains unclear. Building on stakeholder salience theory and on insights from the literature on innovation and succession in family firms, we develop hypotheses about how and under which conditions the predecessor’s board retention affects product innovation in family firms after succession. Building on more than 200 family firm CEO succession cases in small‐ and medium‐sized, privately owned family firms, our results reveal that the predecessor’s board retention negatively affects product innovation. This negative effect is strengthened with increasing involvement of the predecessor in the successor selection process, and it is offset in the case of family succession. Our findings contribute to the emerging stream of research on family firm succession and product innovation and provide important implications for practice.

中文翻译：

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当前任首席执行官留任时：保留前任董事会对家族企业产品创新的作用

鉴于家族企业的经济优势，独特性以及为实现跨代生存而不断更新的重要性，了解家族企业的产品创新是一项重要的研究工作。最近，家族企业的研究强调了下一代首席执行官（CEO；即继任者）的作用，这些首席执行官通常被视为创新家族企业产品的推动力。但是，先前的研究通常忽略了那些被描绘为不愿引入产品创新的前任者，他们经常通过担任董事会职位而参与到继任之后，因此仍然极大地影响着家族决策过程和成果，例如产品创新。 。结果是，我们对前任的角色及其后继参与家族企业产品创新的了解尚不清楚。基于利益相关者的显着性理论和家族企业中创新与继任文献的见解，我们提出了关于前任董事会保留如何以及在何种条件下影响继任后家族企业产品创新的假设。基于中小型私人家族企业中200多个家族企业CEO继任案例，我们的结果表明，前任董事会的保留对产品创新产生了负面影响。随着前辈越来越多地参与继任者选择过程，这种负面影响得到了加强，在家庭继承的情况下，这种不利影响被抵消了。