Abstract
As a personality trait, openness to experience plays a central role in driving behaviors associated with exploration and innovation. Despite decades of extensive research, the expression of openness to experience in business strategy remains understudied. The current study addresses this gap by revealing that the openness in experience perceived from American and Chinese CEOs’ social media predicted their firm’s initiation of diversifying M&As, even after controlling for an extensive set of potential confounds. By replicating our findings across two culturally distinct samples, we highlight the role of openness in corporate strategic decision-making, and the usefulness of social media as a source for personality assessment.