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Co-creation of services (CCOS) is a collaborative strategy that emphasises customer involvement and their expertise to increase the value of the service experience. In the service ecosystem, artificial intelligence (AI) plays a key role in value co-creation. Therefore, this study is undertaken to empirically uncover how AI can empower CCOS.

The source data were collected from 305 service provider respondents and quantitative methodology was applied for data analysis.

New service development augmented with AI provides tangible value to service providers while also providing intangible value to supportive customers. With AI, service providers adapt to new innovations and enrich additional information, which eventually outperforms human-created services.

AI adoption for CCOS empowerment in service businesses brings “service-market fit”, which represents the significant benefits wherein customers contribute to creativity, intuition, and contextual awareness of services, and AI contributes to large-scale service-related analysis by handling volumes of data, service personalisation, and more time to focus on challenging problems of the market.

This study presents theoretical concepts on AI-empowered CCOS, AI technological innovativeness, customer participation in human-AI interaction, AI-powered customer expertise, and perceived benefits in CCOS, and subsequently discusses the CCOS empowerment framework. Then, it proposes a novel conceptual model based on the theoretical concepts and empirically measures and validates the intention to adopt AI for CCOS empowerment. Overall, the study contributes to novel insight on empowering service co-creation with AI.

The increased digital interactions in the B2B industry have enhanced the importance of customer engagement as a measure of firm performance. This study aims to map and analyze temporal and spatial journeys for customer engagement in B2B markets from a bibliometric perspective.

The extant literature on customer engagement research in the B2B context was analyzed using bibliometric analysis. The citation analysis, keyword analysis, cluster analysis, three-field plot and bibliographic coupling were used to map the intellectual structure of customer engagement in B2B markets.

The research on customer engagement in the B2B context was studied more in western countries. The analysis suggests that customer engagement in B2B markets will take centre stage in the coming times as digital channels make it easier to track critical metrics besides other key factors. Issues like digital transformation, the use of artificial intelligence for virtual engagement, personalization, innovation and salesforce management by leveraging technology would be critical for improved B2B customer engagement.

The study provides a comprehensive reference to scholars working in this domain.

The study makes a pioneering effort to comprehensively analyze the vast corpus of literature on customer engagement in B2B markets for business insights.

The rapid advancement of digital transformation requires a shift in firms’ focus from past met needs to both latent future and unmet past needs. However, how boundary-spanning search with future orientation and past orientation affects breakthrough innovation remains unclear. This study thus aims to investigate the relationship between boundary-spanning search and breakthrough innovation from the perspective of search orientation.

In terms of search orientation, this study divides boundary-spanning search into forward-looking search and backward-looking search. Drawing on resource-based view, this study develops a theoretical model in which big data analytics capability moderates the effects of forward-looking and backward-looking searches on breakthrough innovation. Empirical analyses were conducted on data from China’s advanced manufacturing firms. Research model and hypotheses were tested through multiple regression.

The results confirm that forward-looking search has a positive effect on breakthrough innovation, and big data analytics capability strengthens this positive effect. Furthermore, backward-looking search has an inverted U-shaped effect on breakthrough innovation. Interestingly, as big data analytics capability increases, this inverted U-shaped curve flattens and becomes almost linear.

This study uncovers the different effects of boundary-spanning search with different orientations on breakthrough innovation and extends the research on the relationship between boundary-spanning search and breakthrough innovation by incorporating search orientation. Furthermore, by demonstrating the moderating role of big data analytics capability, this study provides a crucial condition under which boundary-spanning search can enhance breakthrough innovation.