Growth and innovation are primary arguments for firms seeking to go public and access resources from the stock market. So it is poignant that going public is, for a majority of firms, associated with a pronounced slump in breakthrough innovation. This paper proposes an actionable, marketing-related explanation for why some firms that go public manage to beat the post-IPO innovation slump: innovation imprinting. The paper argues and demonstrates that those firms that engage in innovation imprinting before they go public attract a segment of concordant investors whose risk preferences are more supportive of breakthrough innovation than investors at large. These investors, in turn, reward the firms’ continued introduction of breakthrough innovations after they have gone public. By analyzing the innovation patterns of 207 firms in the consumer-packaged goods sector before and after an IPO, we observe that one-third of firms are able to maintain or beat their pre-IPO levels of breakthrough innovations after going public. By studying their actions, the investors they attract, and their financial performance and survival rates, we provide empirical evidence for the importance of innovation imprinting and concordant investors in helping firms beat the post-IPO innovation slump.

增长和创新是寻求上市和从股票市场获取资源的公司的主要论据。因此，对于大多数公司来说，上市与突破性创新的显着下滑有关，这一点令人心酸。本文提出了一个可行的、与市场营销相关的解释，解释为什么一些上市公司设法战胜了 IPO 后的创新低迷：创新印记。该论文论证并证明，那些在上市前进行创新印记的公司吸引了一部分一致的投资者，他们的风险偏好比一般投资者更支持突破性创新。反过来，这些投资者奖励公司在上市后继续引入突破性创新。通过分析 207 家消费品行业公司在 IPO 前后的创新模式，我们观察到三分之一的公司在上市后能够保持或超过其 IPO 前的突破性创新水平。通过研究他们的行为、他们吸引的投资者以及他们的财务业绩和生存率，我们为创新印记和一致的投资者在帮助公司克服 IPO 后创新低迷的重要性提供了经验证据。