We combine the social network approach and organizational socialization literature in order to examine the influence of social networks and proactive behavior on newcomers' innovative performance. A sample of new employees completed questionnaires on social network and proactive measures, and their supervisors rated their innovative performance. The results suggest that both sparse (low density) social networks and newcomers' information giving were related to innovative performance. The results also indicate that information giving moderated the relation between sparse social networks and innovative performance: when newcomers' information giving was high, the characteristics of their social networks were not related to their innovative performance. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Inc.