Are Left-Handed CEOs Like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates And Mark Zuckerberg Wired For Innovation? New Research Says They Lead More Creative, Profitable Companies
A new study made public last month suggests that left-handed CEOs, including tech giants like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg, may possess an edge in driving innovation and outperforming their competitors.
What Happened: Research by accounting professors Long Chen and June Woo Park at the Costello College of Business analyzed “7 % of S&P 500 firm CEOs.”
They found that companies led by left-handed CEOs showed significantly higher innovation output, including more patents and citations.
“Left-handed CEOs are likely to hire more foreign employees, who tend to generate more innovation outputs than domestic employees,” the study read.
See Also: Nvidia Boss Jensen Huang’s Total Compensation Hits $50M After First Raise In 10 Years
The study, which also looked at how these CEOs approached talent acquisition, found that left-handed leaders were more likely to recruit from a global pool of tech talent.
“Using patent and citation data from the Bureau van Dijk’s Orbis patent database for the period 1992–2015, we find that firms managed by left-handed CEOs tend to exhibit greater success in innovation,” the study stated.
One key finding was that patents under left-handed leadership were not just more numerous—they were also more original, often representing breakthroughs rather than tweaks to existing technologies.
The research further suggested that firms led by left-handed CEOs enjoyed better financial performance, with higher return on assets and stronger stock returns.
Why It’s Important: Jobs, Gates, and Zuckerberg belong to the roughly 10% of the population that is left-handed.
Apple co-founder Jobs passed away from cancer on Oct. 5 at the age of 56. Jobs was ousted from Apple in 1985. He made his return to Apple in 1996 and remained in the position until 2011, when he resigned.
Gates, who is the co-founder of Microsoft, currently has a net worth of $168 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. He stepped down as Microsoft CEO in 2000.
Zuckerberg, who is currently heading Meta Platforms, Inc., the parent company of Facebook, is the third richest person in the world today. He has a net worth of $211 billion.
Read More:
Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
Photo Courtesy: Alexandros Michailidis On Shutterstock.com
