PurposeInvestigation of family firm radical innovation is burgeoning but far less prevalent than studies of family firm innovation in general. Concurrently, studies repeatedly report that family firms exhibit mostly conservative and incremental innovation rather than more radical ones. This is unfortunate because without radical innovation, family firms risk a competency trap in which long-term competitiveness is lost to more innovative rivals. This situation has led to urgent calls among scholars to explicitly acknowledge the heterogeneity of family firm innovation and to understand the conditions for family firm radical innovation.Design/methodology/approachA systematic review of 51 papers categorized into four scholarly conversations build the foundation for a critical discussion of each line of inquiry.FindingsThe authors analyze 51 leading articles and identify four persistent theoretical positions: (1) RBV and capabilities, (2) agency and stewardship, (3) behavioral agency and socioemotional wealth, and (4) the ability and willingness paradox. The authors identify key research problems and research questions needing urgent scholarly and present a framework that captures their complementary and competing assumptions to enable rigorous future research.Originality/valueTo galvanize and spearhead future research efforts, this paper provides a critical analysis of our understanding of family firm radical innovation with a specific emphasis on the theoretical assumptions at the core of existing investigations and the eight most important research questions in need of answers.

Resource acquisition is vital for new venture survival and growth. However, surprisingly little is known about how the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) of the new venture affects its resource acquisition. Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm, we articulate a theory and treatment of EO that address this oversight and remedy for the routine absence of context among studies of EO. Accounting for the simultaneous effect of environmental dynamism and an opportunistic orientation (OO), a tendency among Chinese new ventures to imitate technology and profit through market information asymmetry, as important contextual variables reflecting the Chinese business context, we provide insights on the contingency effects of contextual variables. Results from a quantitative study of 361 Chinese new ventures show that EO positively influences resource acquisition. However, this relationship is context sensitive. In a low dynamic environment, OO negatively moderates this relationship. However, in a highly dynamic environment, OO exhibits no effect on the relationship between EO and new venture resource acquisition. Our results contribute to a resource-based theory of EO and reveal its context sensitivity. Our study is a step in moving the scholarship of EO forward and away from the performance debate towards greater predictive accuracy of EO and its systems of effects.

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