Innovative capability is an important component of dynamic capabilities, which determines a firm’s development and even survival. Yet the top management team plays the leading role in an organization and thus has an absolute dominance on its performance and future development. This study revealed two critical properties of the top management team, including its strategic intent aggressiveness and composite heterogeneity, have either direct or indirect impacts on organizational product innovation capability. These findings have significant implications for the choice and assignment for the members of the top management team. In terms of strategic intent aggressiveness, if members or future candidates of the top management team intend to care about stakeholders such as employees, community residents, and shareholders, to understand in depth concerns of those people, to consistently follow up the proceeding of their projects, and to actively launch aggressive plans and actions, all of which formulates important dimensions for management based on the findings in this research. Through observation on these dimensions, evaluation on strategic intent aggressiveness for the existing members or future candidates of the top management team will be significantly improved that will further prompt a positive influence on organizational innovative capability.
Secondly, this study shows the functional areas, educational background, and international experiences of candidates should be taken into account to diversify the composition of the top management team. A variety of views and opinions will be gained from a heterogeneous top management team during the process of product innovation, which will give the new products more chances to success. The relationship however is moderated by both firm size and R&D investment. In other words, the bigger the firm size and R&D investment, the more important the heterogeneous top management team gets for product innovation.
Finally, the result of this study also shows a significant yet direct impact of administrative innovation on product innovation. Quick product innovation requires not only the involvement of cross-functional departments, customers, and suppliers, but also the support from the top management team and good cooperative quality among these entities alike. The establishment of a cross-functional project team could streamline communication and exchange among different departments and consequently get them closer to the new market trends. Direct integration between the demand side and the supply side by means of the involvement of customers and suppliers will quicken the whole process of product innovation. However the related coordination among the above parties and activities entails the development of effective administrative innovation such as management development plans, cross-functional innovation organizations, and procedures for developing innovative technique.