Table A1 Interview guide used across...

Table A1

Interview guide used across interviews with boundary-spanning informants

Theme	Main questions	Follow-up prompts/subtopics
Theme 1: Understanding firm innovativeness in B2B ecosystems	How is firm innovativeness understood and discussed in your organization within ongoing customer relationships and ecosystem interactions?	How does innovativeness manifest in practice (e.g. projects, collaborations, adaptations)? In what situations does innovativeness become particularly salient or contested? Is innovativeness formally assessed, discussed or reflected upon internally?
Theme 2: Innovation practices and resource integration	What types of innovation-related activities does your organization engage in, and how are these organized with customers and other ecosystem actors?	Innovation in products, services or processes Innovation in delivery, implementation or coordination Innovation in interaction, collaboration or problem-solving How are roles and responsibilities distributed across actors?
Theme 3: Interactional value creation and outcomes	Which innovation-related practices or interaction patterns tend to be most valuable or consequential in your relationships with customers?	What are differences across customer contexts or projects? How customers engage with or respond to these practices during collaboration? Examples where innovation efforts altered coordination, adaptation or shared understanding
Theme 4: Visibility of customer evaluations of innovativeness	How do customer evaluations of your organization’s innovativeness become visible in practice?	Through what mechanisms (e.g. documented feedback, surveys, project reviews, meetings) do such evaluations surface? How are customer evaluations interpreted and discussed internally? Instances where customer evaluations differed from internal expectations
Theme 5: Ecosystem-level and institutional influences	How do broader ecosystem arrangements influence how innovativeness is enacted and evaluated?	Role of partners, intermediaries, platforms or third-party actors Influence of industry norms, standards or institutional expectations? How ecosystem changes affect the visibility or credibility of innovation efforts?

Theme	Main questions	Follow-up prompts/subtopics
Theme 1: Understanding firm innovativeness in B2B ecosystems	How is firm innovativeness understood and discussed in your organization within ongoing customer relationships and ecosystem interactions?	How does innovativeness manifest in practice (e.g. projects, collaborations, adaptations)? In what situations does innovativeness become particularly salient or contested? Is innovativeness formally assessed, discussed or reflected upon internally?
Theme 2: Innovation practices and resource integration	What types of innovation-related activities does your organization engage in, and how are these organized with customers and other ecosystem actors?	Innovation in products, services or processes Innovation in delivery, implementation or coordination Innovation in interaction, collaboration or problem-solving How are roles and responsibilities distributed across actors?
Theme 3: Interactional value creation and outcomes	Which innovation-related practices or interaction patterns tend to be most valuable or consequential in your relationships with customers?	What are differences across customer contexts or projects? How customers engage with or respond to these practices during collaboration? Examples where innovation efforts altered coordination, adaptation or shared understanding
Theme 4: Visibility of customer evaluations of innovativeness	How do customer evaluations of your organization’s innovativeness become visible in practice?	Through what mechanisms (e.g. documented feedback, surveys, project reviews, meetings) do such evaluations surface? How are customer evaluations interpreted and discussed internally? Instances where customer evaluations differed from internal expectations
Theme 5: Ecosystem-level and institutional influences	How do broader ecosystem arrangements influence how innovativeness is enacted and evaluated?	Role of partners, intermediaries, platforms or third-party actors Influence of industry norms, standards or institutional expectations? How ecosystem changes affect the visibility or credibility of innovation efforts?

Note(s):

(1) Interviews focused on interactional situations and documented evidence through which customer evaluations of innovativeness are articulated, rather than on informants’ personal assumptions about customer perceptions

(2) In two interviews, informants explicitly reflected on customer evaluations based on systematically documented customer feedback and innovation-related records

[ViewLarge]

Sharing Unavailable