As more and more top business leaders deemed the enhancement of product design innovations at higher and higher priority on their agenda, their ways of leadership and support to innovative efforts are certainly becoming important ingredients that surely deserve more attentions than before. This research had studied six Taiwanese companies with superior achievements in product design innovations, which were defined by the number of iF Gold Awards of product design they won in five years. The

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... arch aim was to reveal the effective ways of influence and impact from top executives on innovative performance in product design. Using document analysis and in-depth interviews for these investigations, two research questions were addressed: Did top executives of these innovative companies usually have some unique ways of leadership to enhance their performance in product design innovations? And, what kind of leadership behaviours did they adopted for this purpose? The results had shown positive answers to the first question, and many important examples were found for the second. Finally, seven effective ways of enhancing product design innovations from top executives was concluded from these examples for reference of other executives in Taiwan.