Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) are essential in driving firm innovation. However, despite existing research on CEO personality characteristics and firm innovation and performance, we know relatively little about how personality characteristics reflecting anticipatory action and strong outcome-oriented components, such as proactiveness, shape firm innovation and performance. We explore the relationship between CEO proactiveness and three facets of organizational innovation, as well as its impact on firm performance. We suggest that CEO proactiveness is manifested in different network-building, problem-solving, and feedback-seeking behaviors with different implications for exploratory innovation, exploitative innovation, and organizational ambidexterity, and that its effect on firm performance is partially mediated by organizational ambidexterity. By examining the influence of this important CEO personality characteristic on key firm strategic choices and performance, we extend research on strategic leadership and firm innovation and performance.

首席执行官 (CEO) 在推动公司创新方面至关重要。然而，尽管已有关于 CEO 人格特征与公司创新和绩效的研究，但我们对反映预期行为和强结果导向成分（如主动性）的人格特征如何塑造公司创新和绩效知之甚少。我们探讨了 CEO 主动性与组织创新的三个方面之间的关系，以及它对公司绩效的影响。我们认为，CEO 主动性表现在不同的网络建设、解决问题和寻求反馈的行为中，对探索性创新、剥削性创新和组织二元性有不同的影响，并且其对公司绩效的影响部分受组织二元性的调节。