The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of corporate innovation strategy on firm-level stock price crash risk. Using a sample of French listed firms covering 2007-2016, we show that innovative firms are more prone to future stock price crash risk. Managers of these firms have optimistic expectations about growth prospects that encourage them to hide bad news, leading to higher stock price crash risk. This positive relationship is only prevalent in competitive product markets and with low analyst coverage suggesting that innovative firms are likely to experience stock price crashes when information asymmetry is exacerbated. Our results stand up to several robustness tests and remain unchanged after addressing endogeneity concerns.