Theme
Interview Questions
0. General
introduction
0.1. Can you give a brief
background and history
about your venture /
your role?
Here you want to
gather general info
about your
interviews.
0.2. What was your key
motivation to start your
venture / your role?
1. Systemic
challenges: enablers
and barriers in the
external
environment
1.1. Can you tell us
about the environment
where you operate?
How do the
characteristics of the
systems (economic,
Here your
social, political,
interviewees may talk technological, etc.)
about lock-ins in
impact your operations?
place, path
dependent thinking,
incumbent players,
1.2. What challenges did
stakeholders’
conflicting interests, this entail for you and
your team?
technologies,
regulations, policy,
institutional barriers,
lobbyist forces, public
1.3. How did you go
attitude, change
resistance, planetary about solving those
challenges?
boundaries, etc.
1.4. What
tools/methods did you
use when working with
this challenge?
2. Value-creating
challenges: making
positive long-term
contribution to
society
2.1. What is the value
that you provide to
society?
2.2. What challenges did
Here your
interviewee may tell this entail for you and
your team?
you about their
mission, vision, and
the value of what
they work on. They
may mention issues 2.3. How did you go
about solving those
with prototyping,
product development, challenges?
designing, digital
technology enablers
(e.g., IoT, AI, digital
2.4. What
platforms), external tools/methods did you
legal/regulatory
use when working with
opportunities, and
this challenge?
whether they follow
different processes
from the
conventional way.
3. Human
collaboration
challenges: team
and coordination
issues
Here your
interviewees will talk
about teamwork
issues, difficulties in
building and
maintaining their
teams, conflicts in
their organizations,
ways to overcome
conflicts and
differences in values
3.1. How have you
organized internally to
push your project
forward?
3.2. What challenges did
this entail for you and
your team?
3.3. How did you go
about solving those
challenges?
amongst team
members.
4. Funding
challenges: bringing
money into the
sustainable venture
Here your
interviewee may tell
you about their
efforts to raise funds
to power ahead with
their ideas. They may
mention different
sources for funding
such as impact
investors, FFF
(family/friends/fools),
customer funding,
public funding,
grants, etc. They will
possibly share with
you ideas about their
revenues/sales, and
whether they are
sufficient to run the
business.
3.4. What
tools/methods did you
use when working with
this challenge?
4.1. Can you tell us
about your ways to
sustain your project
financially?
4.2. What challenges did
this entail for you and
your team?
4.3. How did you go
about solving those
challenges?
4.4. What
tools/methods did you
use when working with
this challenge?
5. Final thoughts on 5.1. What has been the
challenges
most challenging part of
your experience?
Here you want your
interviewees to
emphasize a
particular challenge 5.2. What has been the
most useful tool/method
or mention other
challenges they have for facilitating and/or
reflecting on your work?
encountered and
whether any tool has
been particularly
useful for them (as a
5.3. What are your
reference you can
take a look at a list of future plans in the shortterm and long-term?
tools here). Finally,
they hopefully tell
you about possible
future
business/projects and
whether they will
follow the same logic
of sustainability.