The link between material resource adequacy and the performance of innovation projects is one of the most basic and managerially rewarding relationships in innovation management to study, and yet it has remained unclear. Some argue that adequate material resources foster innovation, whereas others suggest the exact opposite: constrained material resources stimulate creativity and innovation. Complementing previous work that focused on project‐level contingencies of the relationship between material resource adequacy and innovation project performance, the objective of this meta‐analysis is to develop a contingency framework involving study‐level and context‐level boundary conditions in an attempt to clarify this relationship. The results show that material resource adequacy is basically positively related to innovation project performance. Testing whether the focus on different dimensions of innovation project performance alters this basic relationship results in the same positive relationship for all examined innovation project outcomes (i.e., general performance, project efficiency, product quality, speed, and market success), except new‐product novelty that did not show a significant relationship with material resource adequacy. Moreover, while the relationship between material resource adequacy and innovation project outcomes turns out to be generalizable across different types of material resources (financial resources vs. equipment) and different product types (tangible vs. intangible products), it is contingent upon the national culture of the countries, in which the projects have been carried out. Specifically, studies in countries scoring high on the cultural dimension of power distance show significantly stronger positive correlations between adequacy of material resources and innovation project performance. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.