The process of framing innovation activities: How strategic leaders erode their ideas for radical innovations

Understanding what impedes and facilitates radical innovation is crucial. This study introduces a process perspective on managerial cognition into the strategic leadership literature to elucidate the dynamics that contribute to idea erosion during the development of radical innovation. Employing a framing perspective and utilizing longitudinal data from a single case, this study presents a process model of strategic leaders' framing-induced idea erosion. At the heart of this process are two dynamics. First is a dynamic consisting of the anticipation of innovation that fails to account for the necessary iterative process, leading to a growing mismatch between expectations and activities. Second is a dynamic consisting of cognitive processes, where strategic leaders frame this mismatch as a failure, this intensifying over time. This study shows that strategic leaders tend to favor incremental over radical innovation, not due to a shortage of ideas but because they frame their activities as failures. • Incremental innovation is due not to a lack of ideas for radical innovation but to leaders’ framing of their innovation activities as failures. • Failure framing (unintentionally) reduces the resources needed for radical innovation, ultimately eroding the ideas. • Avoiding these pitfalls can mean the difference between success and failure for strategic leaders of incumbents. • Despite the setback, this study underscores the pivotal role of strategic leaders in anticipating radical innovations.