Corporate innovation is vital to firms’ long-term success and survival. This study explores a unique aspect of board of directors by associating professor directors and their academic expertise with corporate innovation. Professors have become a staple in the boardroom in recent years. As professors are highly intellectual and extremely knowledgeable in their fields of study, their academic expertise may improve corporate innovation through knowledge transfer and enhanced board diversity. Our findings show that firms with professor directors report higher levels of innovative activity and success in terms of patent output and citation. More importantly, the influence of professor directors varies depending on their academic expertise. We find increasing representation of professor directors with polytechnic and financial expertise on the board, but not professor directors with other expertise, is associated with greater corporate innovation. We further find a significant synergy effect on patent output when a firm appoints both professors with polytechnic expertise and those with financial expertise to the same corporate board. Lastly, we show that their impact on innovation varies with professor directors’ individual characteristics. Overall, our findings demonstrate that corporate innovation benefits arise from professor directors’ academic expertise and not from their mere presence on a board. This study highlights the importance of considering director heterogeneity in engendering corporate innovation. 

Keywords: Corporate Innovation; Professor Director; Academic Expertise; Knowledge Transfer
JEL Codes: M14; O34​