CEOs play a critical role in fostering organizational innovation, which is widely considered a critical element for organizational survival, growth, and performance. CEO personality is emerging as a central area of study in strategic management and has been shown to have a profound impact on firms' performance. However, the few studies that have examined CEO personality and innovation have overlooked CEO's self-monitoring, which is critical in organizational innovation. High self-monitors are particularly good at sensing, judging, and building relationships, all of which directly influence the organization's innovation effort and the value derived from them. We draw from upper echelons and innovation literatures to argue that self-monitoring shapes the dual role played by CEOs in the innovation process: creating value for customers by developing a firm's innovative capabilities and appropriating value for the firm by transforming these capabilities into superior market performance. Self-monitoring CEOs are able to develop and articulate their innovation vision that strongly engages followers' behaviors in the interest of the vision articulated by the CEO. Data from a multi-source sample of 201 small and medium sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) in India show that CEO self-monitoring has a positive impact on innovation capability of a firm and a significant moderating impact in translating that capability into superior firm performance. Additionally, results show that the impact of self-monitoring on innovation capability is stronger under high conditions of environmental complexity, competitive intensity, and demand uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]