Abstract: Overseas experiences of top management team (TMT), as one type of unique resource, constitute the values and cognitive basis of team members and will influence R&D investment intensity of enterprises and their performance outcomes. However, how this kind of unique experience impacts R&D investment intensity of enterprises and their innovation performance, and also how to deal with it still remains a subject that has not been duly studied. This article integrates TMT’s overseas experiences, R&D investment intensity and innovation performance into a unified research framework, and theoretically analyzes the direct effect of TMT’s overseas experiences on R&D investment intensity and innovation performance as well as the mediating mechanisms of R&D investment intensity. Furthermore, empirical results from the data of 275 companies of the Growth Enterprises Market Board (GEMB) in China indicate that TMT’s overseas functional experience and industrial experience have both the direct effect on innovation performance of enterprises and the indirect effect that the experiences drive innovation performance through the mediating mechanism of R&D investment activities, which shows the coupling effect of R&D investment intensity in the relationship between TMT overseas functional experience and industrial experience and innovation performance. The findings of our study have some positive implications for TMT’s structures optimization, R&D resources allocation and innovation performance improvement of enterprises.

Key words: top management team, overseas functional experience, overseas industrial experience, innovation performance, R&D investment intensity