We bring implicit person theory to innovative behavior literature. Borrowing from trait activation theory, we develop a moderated mediation model: the incremental belief of an individual's implicit person theory boosts innovative behavior via enhanced cognitive flexibility, and empowering leadership strengthens this mediation relationship. In addition, to advancing current knowledge of the positive relationship between innovative behavior and job performance, we examine empowering leadership as a boundary condition. We collected multisource and multi-wave data from 308 employees in a knowledge intensive firm in Korea. The results showed that incremental belief had an indirect positive relationship with innovative behavior via cognitive flexibility. Furthermore, empowering leadership strengthened the positive relationship between incremental belief and cognitive flexibility and thus strengthened the indirect positive relationship between incremental belief and innovative behavior (via cognitive flexibility). Finally, the positive relationship between innovative behavior and job performance was stronger when leadership was more empowering. Keywords: innovative behavior, implicit person theory, cognitive flexibility, empowering leadership, job performance.