Abstract: Abstract: Enterprise leaders’ desire for innovation is determined by various factors, both subjective ones and objective ones. A hypothesis that marketing capabilities play an unavoidable role in the self-innovative desire of enterprise leaders is proposed. On the basis of two essential innovative dimensions and experimental factors of “psychological tendency” and “behavior tendency” that aim to measure enterprise leaders’ desire for innovation, the classical “quasi-randomized block” experimental mode was employed. Results suggest that the level of marketing capabilities has a positive and obvious influence on the innovative desire of enterprise leaders. Therefore, the marketing capabilities for Chinese enterprises have to enhance effectively in order to raise active degree of self-innovation for them.

Key words: self-innovation, desire for innovation, marketing capability, experiment