Aligned and Misaligned Innovation and their Performance Outcomes

In this study, we explicitly connect the literature focusing on the drivers of innovation and the literature explaining the performance outcomes of innovation. We examine if heeding the advice of the literature on innovation drivers matters and argue that the performance outcomes of innovation are in large part predicated on the theory-predicted level of innovation. We also decompose the part of innovation that is not theory-derived and investigate the performance consequences of having lower or higher levels of innovation than expected. Furthermore, the performance outcomes of these deviations level display heterogeneity with regard to environmental uncertainty and competitive intensity.