Abstract: With the acceleration of global economic integration, innovation has become the core of corporate competitiveness. The existing literature explores the impact of executives’ background on corporate innovation mostly from the perspective of their social relationships, but seldom from the perspective of their personal experiences. Can executives’ overseas experience promote corporate innovation? What are the underlying mechanisms? This paper finds that the overseas experience background of executive teams can promote corporate innovation, and there is heterogeneity in this promotion effect, which is more significant in non-state-owned enterprises. In the mechanism test, it is found that the background of the executive team’s overseas experience promotes corporate innovation by alleviating their firm’s financing constraints, suppressing the degree of management myopia, and improving their firm’s risk-taking ability, and that external support positively regulates the financing constraints, and negatively regulates the management myopia and risk-taking. The findings of this paper will provide theoretical basis and practical guidance for improving the allocation structure of corporate managers to promote corporate innovation.

Key words: returnee executives, overseas experience, corporate innovation, mechanism research