Do left-handers lead a company differently than right-handers?

About 11% of the global population is left-handed and people often wonder whether there are psychological differences between left-handers and right-handers. One often-mentioned idea is that left-handers may be more creative than right-handers. Previous studies on this question mostly focused on artistic abilities, but creativity can be relevant in many different situations in life that have nothing to do with creating art. For example, creativity can be crucial in business when it comes to finding new innovative solutions to problems a company faces or when creating new innovative products. As the link between left-handedness and innovation and creativity in the business context is not understood at all so far, a new psychological study focused on investigating this topic.

A new study focused on left-handed CEOs and how they affect company innovation success

The study, just published in the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance focused on identifying left-handed company CEOs (Chen and co-workers, 2025). To this end, the research team, led by scientist Long Chen from Costello College of Business at George Mason University, first compiled a list of 500 CEOs from leading American companies listed on stock exchanges. The scientists then analyzed videos and pictures of the CEOs to identify whether they were left-handed or right-handed. They also directly emailed the company to ask about their CEO’s handedness.

To measure the innovation success of each company, the scientists assess how many patents were granted to the company, and also how often patents by the company were cited, which is an estimate of how economically and technologically significant the patent is. Moreover, the scientists assessed further variables that could affect the link between handedness and innovation success such as gender as men tend to be left-handed more often than women.

Companies with a left-handed CEO have greater innovation success

Overall, 8% of the investigated CEOs were left-handed, a value close to that observed in the general population (about 11%). Interestingly, there was a statistically significant effect showing that companies with a left-handed CEO had been granted more patents than companies with a right-handed CEO. Moreover, patents owned by companies with a left-handed CEO were also cited significantly more often than patents owned by companies with a right-handed CEO. These effects even persisted after sophisticated statistical control procedures showed that they were fairly robust.

Moreover, the scientists analyzed what happened when a company transitioned from a right-handed to a left-handed CEO and vice versa. Interestingly, transitioning from a right-handed to a left-handed CEO increased innovation success as measured by patents. In contrast, no such effect was observed when a company switched from a left-handed to a right-handed CEO.

When trying to analyze why left-handed CEOs are more successful innovators than right-handed CEOs, the scientists identified two relevant factors: On the one hand, left-handed CEO were more likely to be inventors themselves than right-handed CEOs. On the other hand, they also hired more immigrant workers, which may bring a fresh perspective to the company and increase innovation.

Taken together, the study shows that having a left-handed CEO is beneficial for innovation success. While innovation is not the only factor driving company success, it can certainly be crucial in some fields, and CEO left-handedness can predict a company’s innovation success.