Artificial intelligence (AI) provides large potentials for non-incremental innovation. However, to gain support for investment decisions on AI-based innovations, strategic actors must apply differ-ent framing behaviors to construct and negotiate the meaning of these innovations. Still, it re-mains unclear how the emotional and cognitive components of framing shape the understanding and support for AI-based innovation, and how they are interrelated with process formalization as the structural context. Addressing this shortcoming, we conducted multiple case study research, drawing on insights from 53 interviews, on-site observations, and archival data in three cases. Our inductive coding reveals that strategic actors use two framing behaviors, ‘grounding in the busi-ness’ and ‘calling on feelings’, to engage in ‘mobilizing support’ and shape a final investment de-cision for AI-based innovations. Further, process formalization guides and reinforces the cogni-tive ‘grounding in the business’ while the emotional ‘calling on feelings’ flexibilizes processes. The emergent framework shows that the absence of process formalization leads to AI being framed in an unstructured way, withdrawing the foundation for support in AI-based innovation. Yet, using emotional framing is further needed to enable the sensitizing for the malleability of AI-based innovations and to cultivate trust in AI. Thus, emotional framing complements cognitive framing in shaping the trust in AI and, thereby, decisions to invest in AI-based innovations sub-stantially and roll them out. This study extends our understanding of how strategic leaders can successfully cope with the challenges of AI-based innovations, how framing is grounded in pro-cess formalization, and how emotional framing complements cognitive framing.
