Abstract: The choice between explorative innovation and exploitative innovation is critical for high-performing firms’ long-term development. Integrating the performance feedback perspective and attention-based view, it explores the different influential mechanisms of the relative performance above social and historical aspirations on firms’ innovation decision about exploration and exploitation. Based on a panel data of Chinese listed companies from 2011 to 2016, combined with text analysis, the empirical findings show that: on the one hand, the relative performance above social aspiration strengthens TMTs’ attention to exploitative innovation; The lower the consistency of performance feedback based on social and historical aspirations is, the weaker the above relationship is. Meanwhile, the relative performance above historical aspiration strengthens the TMT attention to explorative innovation. The lower the consistency of the two kinds of performance feedback is, the weaker the above relationship is. On the other hand, the TMT attention to innovation plays a full intermediary role for the relationships between the relative performance above aspirations and the innovation outcomes. The research results reveal the internal mechanism of how high-performance companies choose between explorative and exploitative innovations, and provide guidance for how managers and scholars should interpret the relative performance above aspirations.