Travelling thousands of miles: independent directors’ cross-regional experience and corporate innovation

Under China’s dual-system corporate governance, independent directors (hereafter, IDs) undertake diverse governance duties. This paper examines how IDs’ cross-regional experience covering birth, education and work shapes corporate innovation via their advising and decision-making functions. We find such experience significantly boosts firms’ innovation input and output by reflecting IDs’ risk attitudes and upgrading their abilities and resource access. Cross-regionally educated or working IDs born in Beijing, Shanghai or Guangdong better foster innovation, while the effect weakens for IDs holding undergraduate degrees from 985 universities with inherent advantages. This research extends literature on executives’ personal traits and provides implications for listed firms’ internal governance and innovation strategies.