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Firm innovation is of vital importance to New Zealand's economy, but we understand little about how different human resource (workforce) factors influence innovation approaches (product/services innovation, process innovation, and innovation speed). We explore three human resource (HR) factors: workforce knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs), workforce attraction, and workforce retention, using a sample of New Zealand private sector firms (n = 402). Regression analysis shows all HR factors are significant predictors of all innovation approaches. Further analysis shows workforce KSAs is dominant towards product/service innovation, workforce attraction is dominant towards process innovation, and workforce retention is dominant towards innovation speed. Moderating effects by firm size are found showing small-sized firms out innovate large-sized firms when workforce KSA are high, despite small-sized firms having, on average, weaker HR factors and innovation approaches than large-sized firms. We highlight the organisational implications across small – and large-sized firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]