Since the Upper Echelon Theory was proposed by Hambrick in 1984, it has received extensive attention from the academic circles and have been one of the basic theories in the field of strategic decision-making. The Upper Echelon Theory points out that executive traits can predict organizational strategic decisions to a certain extent. As one of the most influential strategic decisions of the company, corporate innovation has always been the focal point that attracts the attention of scholars. In the meanwhile, the application of Upper Echelon Theory in enterprise innovation research has also gained abundant achievements.

In recent years, characteristics of the top management team (TMT) have been a hot issue in the research field of corporate innovation. Based on behavioral finance theory, the research directions of characteristics of TMT mainly include demographic characteristics, irrational psychology and some special experiences of executives, such as hobbies and poverty experience in early years. Existing literature has shown that TMT′s age, educational background, tenure, overconfidence etc. have a significant effect on corporate innovation in different degree. Zhang Xindong et al. found that the famine experience in early years of executives (and  overconfidence)had a negative(positive) impact on the innovation investment, and the impact of famine experience was greater than overconfidence; According to empirical research, Shao Jianbing figure out that the military experience of executives is harmful to innovative investment, the reasons related to the will and character honed in the military career, and the excellent characters conduce less involved in corrupt behavior, which aggravate financing constraints in turn; Sunder et al. found that CEO flying hobbies enhance corporate innovation performance and believe that flight Hobbies reflect the CEO′s "sense seeking" which is related to personal creativity. It can be found that the research on the characteristics of executives has gradually expanded to the geographical environment, cultural factors and personal experience (which can be called environmental traits). The study of environmental traits is essentially a retrospective analysis of managers′ personality, cognition, and values. As the economic consequences of executive experience are confirmed, the economic consequences of growth environment should also be taken seriously. 

It is worth thinking that the external environment profoundly affects individuals′ traits and beliefs, even behaviors. Therefore, it is also necessary to pay attention to the growing environment of the characteristics of decision maker. Unfortunately, few literatures directly examined the relationship between leader′s growth environment and corporate innovation empirically. This paper is intended to test the direct relationship between the leader′s growing environment and corporate innovation. Taking A-share listed companies in China as sample, using the multiple linear regression method, this paper empirically analyzes the relationship between the actual controller growth environment and corporate innovation from the perspective of native place development level, and further analyzes the moderating effect of ownership concentration and CEO position. The reason for choosing actual controller as leader is the special role in Chinese enterprises they played. Actual controller owns the major decision-making power for corporate innovation, and most of them have rights to execute specific innovation projects at the same time in non-state-owned firms. The development level of native place is according to the city classification of China, it is recorded as 1 if the native place located at municipal district of the first-tier cities (totally 7 cities such as Beijing and Shanghai) and the second-tier cities (totally 31 cities such as Nanjing and Qingdao),and recorded as 0 if at other areas. The value of 1 means that the native place is more developed.

The empirical results show that the native place of actual controller is more developed, even though no significant difference in the R&D investment participation, the innovation performance is better. More in-depth analysis found that, compared with the relative shareholders, the actual controller who is absolutely holding (share ratio is more than 50 percent) will promote the effect between the development level and corporate innovation; What′s more, when the actual controller is the CEO at the same time, the effect is more obvious relatively. In summary, it was confirmed that actual controller growth environment has a significant impact on corporate innovation, and the function route may not be the willingness to innovate of decision-maker, but the comprehensive quality related to the innovation achievements. It is probably because people from developed regions may have advantages in educational resources, human capital and family conditions which contribute to the formation of corporate innovation achievements. The personal will and individual ability of actual controller can be fully reflected when they are absolutely holding or(and) severing as CEOs. Therefore, companies are required to coordinate the "personality" of decision-making team when formulating and implementing innovation planning. It should also pay attention to the quality and comprehensive capabilities of specific project leaders in order to optimize innovation plan and improve innovation performance. 

The research contribution of this study is mainly in the following two aspects. Firstly, it enriches the literature on the economic consequences of entrepreneurial growth environment. The existing literature pays more attention to the connotation of entrepreneurship and its positive influence in economic development. Less literature studies the economic consequences of entrepreneurial growth environment from the perspective of corporate behavior. In addition, different from the study of the single impact of an executive′s experience on innovation, we choice the birthplace development level as a proxy variable for environmental differences can reflect the comprehensive effects of regional economic, cultural, institutional and other factors. Secondly, this paper expands the research framework of enterprise innovation theory. The existing literature is mainly in accordance with resource-based theory and principal-agent theory to study how to improve the innovation capacity from the perspective of the enterprise itself and the characteristics of senior management. Few literature extends the influencing factors to the executive growth environment. The findings also have meaningful reference value for improving the corporate innovation capabilities.