“seeing” the difference: the importance of visibility and action as a mark of “authenticity” in coproduction comment on “collaboration and coproduction of knowledge in healthcare: opportunities and challenges”

The rycroft-malone paper states that co-production relies on ‘authentic’ collaboration as a context for action. our commentary supports and extends this assertion. we suggest that ‘authentic’ co-production involves processes where participants can ‘see’ the difference that they have made within the project and beyond. we provide examples including: the use of design in health projects which seek to address power issues and make contributions visible through iteration and prototyping; and the development of ‘actionable outputs’ from research that are the physical embodiment of co-production. finally, we highlight the elements of the collaboration for leadership in applied health research and care (clahrc) architecture that enables the inclusion of such collaborative techniques that demonstrate visible co-production. we reinforce the notion that maintaining collaboration requires time, flexible resources, blurring of knowledge producer-user boundaries, and leaders who promote epistemological tolerance and methodological exploration.