Hackster Impact Story: Build2Gether Turning Research Into Global Innovation Movement

The Build2Gether initiative, hosted in collaboration with ETH Zürich at Hackster with the goal of translating academic insights into real-world impact, has evolved into a global movement of open social innovation. The initiative was presented at various management conferences around the world during 2024 and the founder Cyrille Grumbach was awarded Forbes 30 under 30 Europe in the Social Impact category in 2025 .

Across its two major phases (contests on Hackster) — Build2Gether 1.0 and 2.0, which focused on disability innovation — has demonstrated how rigorous research, when paired with inclusive innovation practices, can generate scalable and socially meaningful outcomes. To date, the initiative has enabled the development of over 330 open source solutions, which have been downloaded more than 300,000 times worldwide. It has connected a global community of over 1,000 innovators — spanning backgrounds, disciplines, and geographies — to co-create solutions addressing diverse societal challenges. These have led to a lasting impact on the disability community.

With Build2Gether, the narrative in assistive technology shifted from “designing for” to “building with.” Instead of treating individuals with disabilities as passive recipients of innovation, they are treated as co-creators: the thinkers behind the solutions that change lives. These achievements were made possible through support from Hackster’s business partners such as Google, Arm, Nordic Semiconductor, Blues, DFRobot, PCBWay, M5Stack, Seeed Studio, Useful Sensors, as well as prestigious academic research grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), Innosuisse, ETH RESC, ETH PBL, and ETH for Development (ETH4D).

Hackster played a pivotal role in this success by connecting hardware technology ecosystem business partners to a meaningful purpose and providing an accessible and collaborative platform where ideas could be shared, refined, and brought to life.

Through Hackster’s global reach and vibrant technical community, disabled users who normally do not have access to product feedback channels gained direct access to innovators who can build functional prototypes, and together they engage in real-time problem-solving and design build. The open nature helped democratize innovation, ensuring that participation was not limited by institutional or geographic boundaries.

Build2Gether 1.0 had three tracks: swimming, gaming, and traveling; created nearly 200 reference projects for visually or mobility impaired. The research outcome highlighted the importance and limitations of transferring users’ knowledge to external problem solvers. It challenged longstanding assumptions by showing that direct, codified communication of problems often outperforms less structured, experience-based collaboration when the user’s knowledge is primarily physical in nature. This insight provides a critical boundary for current literature on knowledge transfers and user-centric innovation.

Build2Gether 2.0 interated upon 1.0's learnings and evolved to four tracks: two for visually impaired — outdoor/indoor activities and another two for mobility impaired — home/tools and sports/hobbies track. The research demonstrated that offering feedback early on how solvers formulate the problem itself, rather than only on their solutions, can drive more original and effective innovations. Without this guidance, solvers tend to default to obvious problems, resulting in solutions that are merely incrementally innovative.

We are excited to continue on this movement and contribute to the movement of making inclusive technology development more inclusive. Follow more on the initiative's new LinkedIn page here.