Abstract: At present, the cross-research on leadership and business model innovation is flourishing. Aiming at the reality that there are few cross-studies on humble leadership and business model innovation, this study, based on the Upper Echelon Theory, introduces the creativity and decision-making ability of top management team (TMT) as the mediators, and the external support of innovation as the moderator. This paper discusses the influence of humble leadership on business model innovation as well as its intermediary mechanisms and boundary condition. The results show that humble leadership positively affects business model innovation of mature enterprises and TMT creativity, and negatively affects TMT decision-making ability. TMT creativity and TMT decision-making ability play a partial mediating role between humble leadership and business model innovation. Specifically, TMT creativity plays a positive indirect role between humble leadership and business model innovation while TMT decision-making ability plays a negative indirect role between them. The higher the level of external support for innovation, the stronger the positive effect of humble leadership on TMT creativity, the weaker the negative effect on TMT decision-making ability, and the stronger the mediating effect of TMT creativity, the weaker the mediating effect of TMT decision-making ability. The research explains the complex mechanisms and potential negative effect of humble leadership on business model innovation, and provides theoretical enlightenment for humble leaders to promote business model innovation of mature enterprises.

Key words: business model innovation, humble leadership, mature enterprises