This study explores the interplay between political ideology and partisanship as part of corporate eco-innovation to understand how ideological conflict can serve as a driver for eco-innovation. While traditional management research often views political ideology as a source of bias, this manuscript challenges that notion by suggesting that partisanship and ideological conflicts are essential for addressing grand challenges like climate change. Using green patents as a proxy for eco-innovation, we investigate how political engagement at the inventor level interacts with top management team (TMT) partisanship to influence eco-innovation. Employing a unique dataset linking USPTO patent filings with Federal Election Commission political donations as well as BoardEx and Execucomp, we connect the political donation history of inventors and TMT members in terms of political engagement and political partisanship respectively. Leveraging the 2017 inauguration of Donald Trump as an econometric shock, we apply a difference-in-difference estimator to assess how political engagement and partisanship affect green patent applications. The results reveal the following two outcomes. First, politically engaged inventors significantly drive eco-innovation overall. Second, while green patenting declines in politically engaged organizations post-Trump’s election, strong TMT partisanship mitigates this decline.
