In this paper, I introduce a new concept of CEO temporal ambivalence to capture the extent to which CEOs characteristically devote simultaneous attention to the present and future. This concept allows a better understanding of how CEOs attend to the fundamental intertemporal tensions between the present and future in strategy making. Specifically, I develop a model explaining how CEO temporal ambivalence addresses a key firm strategic paradox with inherent intertemporal tensions – ambidextrous innovation. Based on multi-wave survey data from CEOs of high-tech small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK, the results showed that CEO temporal ambivalence enhanced the balanced dimension (BD) of ambidextrous innovation via promoting the CEO’s acceptance of contradictions. Moreover, CEO temporal ambivalence enhanced the combined dimension (CD) of ambidextrous innovation via promoting the CEO’s perception of complex causality. Taken together, the results corroborate a dual-pathway model through which CEO temporal ambivalence facilitates firm ambidextrous innovation via CEO paradoxical cognitions. This study seeks to advance an ambivalence perspective on executives’ subjective view of time, which complements the contingency-based perspective dominating the literature and expands our understanding of more complex and inherently paradoxical temporal phenomena in organizations.