Objective. To explore and resolve any philosophical differences and pragmatic implementation issues to make the best of open innovation and end user participation in the Assistive Technology(AT) field. From this inform the design of the REALISE online open innovation community tool.

Main content. Open innovation and user participation methodologies initially seem to be compatible. The definitions of Open Innovation and the claimed strengths and weaknesses, end-user participation and its strengths and weaknesses, and, a ‘marriage’ between these approaches are all presented. Further consideration reveals that evidence and usual practice in open innovation clashes with principles of user participation in the AT field and what is called ‘patient and public involvement’ in the UK.

Results. In trying to establish a design for the REALISE project online platform it became apparent to project team members that there are some philosophical clashes that impact pragmatic implementation. An approach to allow the best of these two methods to be utilized for the AT field is proposed. This draws on consistency of treatment of stakeholders. It maintains the likely scenario of AT users specifying their needs and, innovators and manufacturers proposing and implementing, respectively, solutions. How the proposed approach can work with user centred design and evaluation processes is also described to further demonstrate suitability for the AT field. The practical implementation of some of these findings can be seen in REALISE.

Conclusion. With the lack of hard evidence to draw on in a situation that incorporates methodological innovation it is necessary to systematically analyse and propose solutions to test. In principle it is possible to bring Open Innovation and User Participation together into a single logical approach that is self consistent and acceptable to the AT field. One important benefit should be natural involvement of users in the entire process – idea to product and use. The long term proof of the proposed solution by definition requires evidence acquired with more time and attempts to use it and to adapt it through collection of more evidence.