Firm growth has been a focus of attention for a large number of studies. However, the influence of a firm's manager is still absent from many of these analyses. Departing from the data of the Longitudinal Survey of Businesses from Chile, the aim of this article is to analyse the relationship between innovation and firm growth depending on the sex of the leader between 2007 and 2015. Applying econometric models of quantiles with fixed effects, the results reveal that there is a positive relationship between innovation, firms led by women and sales growth. In particular, male managers exert a negative impact on the firm growth. This impact is particularly more important for non-innovative firms. Finally, the growth rate increases if a female manager replaces to a male manager. Conversely, the growth rate decreases if a male manager replaces a female manager.

Abstract An extensive empirical literature shows the important role that information sources have on firm innovation. However, there is scarce evidence on the different typologies of between technological and non‐technological innovations and their expectations. We investigate how the wide number of information sources affect the propensity to innovate and its future expectations. At the methodological level, we apply a multivariate Probit to the Innovation Survey of Chilean companies (2013–2016). Our results show that internal information sources, suppliers, clients and the Internet are significantly associated with the development of technological and non‐technological innovations. Social innovations are affected only by internal and by market (primarily from consultancy firms) sources of information. Finally, internal information sources and the Internet affect firms' expectations to innovate. Our results indicate the importance of different information flows and how they may drive the generation of innovations.