Creative Corporate Culture and Innovation

Abstract

We identify creative companies by means of a textual analysis that hinges on the competing values framework. We show that a creative corporate culture is an important driver of innovation, as measured by the number of patents as well as the patents’ importance as captured by patents’ citations and market values. A portfolio of creative companies earns significantly positive annual four-factor alphas. We quantify potential biases that could be induced by the omission of relevant variables by formally examining coefficient movements after inclusion of controls.