Table 3:

Illustrative data excerpts related to Partnership Working in Multi-agency, Heterogeneous Consortia.

Working across boundaries	Q1 “ … in the health service, there’s a big inertia to bringing in a change and… the intervention in the consumer space, it’s, you know, it’s much more receptive to that.” (C4(b) Operations – Business).
	Q2 “ … there are NHS organisations and they’re very keen on making sure governance is adhered to. I’m not saying that the retail or the manufacturing partners aren’t, but we’ve got a very keen eye for that whereas they’ve got a very keen eye on finished products and getting things there. But that doesn’t cause any issues, I don’t think, I think it probably complements each other and it’s a new way of working as well. ” (C2(b) Manager, Informatics).
	Q3 “ … we are comfortable with—as community engagement partners—that they be strong for the people that are involved. The industry and technology partners are comfortable that a tangible outcome means they can get on and do something and build something. ” (C1(b) Representative, Third Sector organization).
Differences in the local digital health economy	Q4 “ … we’ve gone from having four [name of product] deploying partners down to two and the contrast between [NHS organisation 1] and [NHS organisation 2] in some levels is quite striking. So [NHS organisation 1] seem to be much clearer on their process maps and their interactions and the benefits of the product. [NHS organisation 2] don’t seem to understand the internal structural process … [NHS organisation 1], as I say, they’re much further developed in terms of their own Digital Strategy as an organisation so their staff are… they do Mobile working, they have tablets and, you know, they’re digitally enabled.” (C3(m) Manager 1 – Business).
Lack of shared understanding between partners	Q5 “ So … various things that took longer than expected and I think the contract, getting it one week and then expecting us to sort of sign it and start the, start within a couple of weeks, that was never going to happen.” (C2(b) Manager 1 – NHS).
	Q6 “ … and on the NHS side, thinking… about six months in… people started to talk about pilots…and we were going, it’s not a pilot. It says that it’s not a pilot. This isn’t a pilot. It’s not going to help you if you think, it’s not going to help any of us to think of it as a pilot. We’re supposed to be deploying these things into use, not talking about pilots, not inventing… you know, and… but that only occurred later. And they’d already started.” (C3(m) Manager 2 – Business).
	Q7 “ … in hindsight I think what should have been done is… each of those partners should have articulated those things much more clearly beforehand and been selected on that basis. You know… a clear position on where they’re at within their own digital strategies, organisationally.” (C3(m) Manager 1 – Business).
Partners in the right spaces	Q8 “It’s all about partners working together, making sure we all understand what we’re doing, who’s doing what so we can then feedback to our teams to give people that kind of general understanding. But also I need to make sure that [Voluntary organization name], we’re delivering on the champion’s front, which is recruiting 150 volunteers to go and talk about health and wellbeing, but around the assisted technology as well. So, I manage that and underneath me you have a project manager and you have eight staff who are all working on it … ” (C2(b) Representative, Voluntary organization).
	Q9 “I think [Name’s] point about being—the disconnect—perhaps between the visionaries and the resource that’s got, or the Management that’s got to implement is an important lesson. It’s about making sure that those people who are sitting at the table saying, my organisation can do X, Y and Z are actually connected with the people who’ve got to do the X, Y and Z and we can see that within the program in that all the partners so [Third sector organisation name], [Charity organisation 1 name], [Charity organisation 2 name], the people who are sitting around the table are the people who have it in their authority to go, will this work, yes, it will, we’ll sign it off. Whereas within the NHS and the local authority the visionaries weren’t necessarily directly connected or influential… To the operations bit of the organisation. So that’s an interesting lesson.” (C2(m) Manager 2 – NHS).
Leadership and project management skills	Q10 “ We are not frightened of making decisions, there are clearly risks roundabout that and we’ve taken them on our shoulders and made sure that the right people are briefed but yes I think that’s actually been quite a significant benefit to the project as well.” (C1(m) Manager 1 – NHS).
New collaborative working	Q11 “ … the thing that’s more difficult to describe is the activity I think [Name] referred to earlier on, the activity that’s starting to happen between partners so it’s more about the relationship which we’re starting to get here where people see mutual benefit in doing things differently together … ” (C2(m) Manager 2 – NHS)