We investigate the influence of non-executive outside directors on firms' innovative performance for a sample of 1,393 listed firms in the EU-15 member states plus Norway and Switzerland in the period 2005 to 2010. Our results show that the fraction of non-executive outside directors on the board is associated with a significant decrease in the number of patent applications if competition in the market is low. This may indicate that restrictive monitoring and lower advising competences of outside directors mitigate executives' incentives to innovate. In industries with effective competition, the negative influence of outsiders is offset by the pressure to focus on innovation strategies. Finally, the results are significant for continental European firms but not for the subsample of UK firms pointing to differences in the impact of specific governance systems with respect to innovation.
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