Abstract Failure to meet the preferences and needs of users has been consistently stressed as a major cause of unsuccessful R&D for over 30 years. Yet little seems to change. An important element in this “producer–user paradox” is a lack of frameworks able to inform empirical research and the work that people do when they bridge designing, implementing, using and managing new technology. “Learning economy” and “social learning in technological innovation” appear promising as such integrative frameworks not least due to their emphasis on learning between producers and users. The present paper examines the value in the way learning is treated in these frameworks for empirical research and for the practitioners, and to this aim contrasts these frameworks to findings from a line of studies on learning between producers and users of new health technologies.