Scholars have noticed the importance of innovation for a nation's wealth; and the possibility that some nations could be better at innovating than others. This study takes the Confucian Dynamism dimension of national culture as focal lens to investigate how cultural values influence the innovativeness of societies. A theoretical model is developed and tested with data from 19 countries for the years 1996 to 2006. The results indicate that Confucian Dynamism does influence national innovativeness. The results also lead to a revised model of how Confucian Dynamism could influence national innovativeness. In addition, this study offers possible explanations of how Confucian Dynamism influences innovation on the individual- and firm-level.